Good Book Hunting, Saturday, October 12, 2019: Friends of the Christian County Library Book Sale

So yesterday, we headed down to Ozark for the semi-annual Friends of the Christian County Library book sale, and it was only when we got to the library in Ozark and saw an emptyish parking lot and the shades drawn on the meeting room that I remembered that the Friends of the Christian County Library has started shifting one of the two sales to the Nixa branch. Which we did not pass as we drove through Nixa to get to Ozark. As a matter of fact, we have never been to the new flagship of the Christian County library, which turns out to be a larger and nicer facility. Which meant they could spread out about the same number of books over slightly more floor space.

At any rate, it was half price day, which meant I got a bunch for a little.

I got:

• Double Star, a Robert Heinlein juvie that earned me a book sale friend. Another guy saw it and asked where I got it; I mentioned it was mixed in, and that there were not others, or I would have them in my hands. He told me of the collection he’d received as a gift, a trash bag full of classic science fiction, and I envied it. Later, he approached me to offer me the copy of Friday that he’d found, but, come on: The later Heinlein hardbacks are easy to come by. At any rate, I’ll hit this one up sometime; I’d say “Soon,” but I’m surprised to see how many Heinlein books I come across in the library here that I have not yet read.
• The Merchants’ War by Frederik Pohl. It’s a sequel to an earlier work, but by the time I get to it, I might also have read it. After all, my beautiful wife gave me the sequels to Gateway not long after I read it, and I have not read them yet.
• 19th Precinct by Christopher Newman. It looks a lot like the paperback police procedurals I ate up as a kid, like the Precinct: Siberia series. So I’ll throw it in the blender.
• Mother Goose in the Ozarks by Ray Wood. Odds are I’ll read this first of all the things I bought today as it is a short, cartoonish bit of humor.
• Tales of the Caribbean by Fritz Seyfarth. It looks to be similar to a lot of collections of tales that I have. So why not this one, a saltwater one, contrasted with the freshwater ones in the library already?
• Mary, Mary by Ed McBain. The title indicates it’s a Matthew Hope novel. I might already own it, as I’ve not really gotten into the Hope series like I did the 87th Precinct series.
• Two Patrick O’Brian books, The Hundred Days and Blue at the Mizzen. Which I bought in case I don’t have them already, although it has been (cough, cough) ten years since I read Master and Commander and started accumulating the series. Longer than the aforementioned Frederik Pohl series.
• L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 31. It’s a collection of stories including works by Larry Niven and Orson Scott Card. I foresee a science fiction binge in 2021 or 2022.
• The Turner Thesis Concerning the Role of the Frontier in American History, a 1956 college textbook of some sort which looked interesting enough to put into the stack.
• Murder as a Fine Art by David Morrell. I read his novel First Blood and First Blood Part II in 2008, and I’ve been accumulating his books since. Which, if you’re keeping track, is longer than both the O’Brian and Pohl books noted above. Perhaps 2021 or 2022 will see my David Morrell binge instead of or in addition to science fiction.
• Three Times Three Mystery Omnibus. It’s a large collection that starts off with the novel The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler and includes stories by Gardner, McBain, Christie, and others. But it will only count as one book in my annual total, perhaps in 2030 or so.
• Marion’s Wall by Jack Finney. I have a couple of books by Jack Finney; I read Time and Again so long ago that it does not appear on this blog. I read a short story of his earlier this year in Stories of Suspense.
• Christmas Lights by Christine Pisera Naman. This looks to be a Christmas type novel; as you know, I like to read a Christmas novel every year. Hopefully, I won’t lose this one amidst the volumes of the library as I did with a number that I bought last year.
• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. Apparently, it’s a serious novel, and it’s about Buddha. I’m surprised I don’t own this already, but I’ve never found it for 50 cents before.
• The Postman by David Brin. The source for the Kevin Costner movie. I saw the book mentioned on the Internet somewhere recently, and there it was in Nixa. I liked the movie, by the way. Of course, I thought Waterworld wasn’t bad, either. I watched them both back to back, as I mentioned earlier.
• Endangered Lighthouses by Tim Harrison and Ray Jones. Not so much a browsing book for football games; it appears to be a compendium of lighthouses, their history, and some photos with a page for each entry.
• Colorful Missouri which is a football browser. The woman counting the books commented on it, and I said I’d likely read the book instead of actually enjoying the fall color.
• The World of the Polar Bear, also a browser of Arctic photos.
• Humphrey Bogart: A Hollywood Portrait, which might be a browser or it might not. Regardless, it’s Bogart. The woman counting the books called it “cute,” but that did not dissuade me from purchasing it.
• Vancouver: A Year in Motion, also a browser akin to city-focused photo books like Detroit, New York, and San Francisco (amongst other examples you can find on this blog).
• Unsolved Mysteries of the Past, a compendium that I read in 2006. I bought this copy for my oldest son. I wish I could find Mysteries of the Unexplained for him as he’s into that (as I was at his age), but it’s hard to find that book in the wild when you’re looking for it even though it was pretty common when I was not. Probably many of them have been ground into cat litter by now.

I also bought a book of number crosswords for my youngest son and two CDs: Lee Ann Womack’s I Hope You Dance and Rage Against The Machine’s The Battle of Los Angeles. No John Denver, though.

The total for my books and the three books and puzzle that my wife bought: $11.50. I laid out a twenty and then renewed my membership in the Friends of the Christian County Library as I do every book sale, whether I attend once or twice a year.

Which reminds me: I have just lapsed in membership to the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library, and I should consider renewing before I venture up to its (their? our?) book sale next week.