Good Book Hunting, March 30, 2020: ABC Books

Gentle reader, I did not go to ABC Books yesterday. Springfield is on a 30 day timeout, and non-essential businesses are closed.

But the intrepid staff of ABC Books is in-house fulfilling online orders, so last week, I placed an order, and today it arrived.

The acquisitions are a little different from my normal fare (but not too much) because, instead of browsing their actual shelves, I went to their Alibiris page and browsed the categories. And bought anything that looked interesting.

I got:

• The Tough-Minded Optimist by Norman Vincent Peale. I have started re-reading The Power of Positive Thinking, so I wanted to gather the sequels in case I want to read them as well. I think I already have The Power of the Plus Factor here somewhere. Probably right beside the Agatha Christie collection I have lost.
• A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict by John Baxter. I can’t imagine what this must be like, but I will have to try.
• Thinking Body, Dancing Mind: Tao Sports for Extraordinary Performance Athletics, Business, and Life by Chungliang Al Huang and Jerry Lynch. I will skip dietary recommendations, though.
• Boomerangs: How to Make and Throw Them by Bernard S. Mason. In case we go all the way primitive. Unlike the book on whip making that I bought in December, perhaps I can work on these projects with my children.
• The Art of Love by Ovid / Translated by Rolfe Humphries. A collection of poems that are fitting into my recent film viewing (and reading, albeit slowly).
• Rocky Mountain Warden by Frank Calkins. An older hardback, probably something along the lines of Nature Noir but with less Lyme disease.
• The Little Capoeira Book by Nestor Capoeira himself. Capoeira is a Brazilian dancing martial art. I studied it briefly during a unit on it in our martial art’s school Master’s Club, which was essentially a survey of weapons and other fighting styles.
• The Country Roads and Other Poems by Hazel Adelman, a collection of grandmother poetry published by Vantage Press. Which was a vanity press outfit, so it was essentially self-published in a high quality and high cost hardback.
• Si-Cology 101: Tales and Wisdom from Duck Dynasty’s Favorite Uncle by Si Robertson with Mark Schlabach. You know, I had a gift schtick for my aunt who just passed away. On a call sometime she said something about Duck Dynasty, and not complimentary, so every Christmas I would send her something with a Duck Dynasty theme. Duck Dynasty sweatshirts, Duck Dynasty beach towels, and so on. Last year, I had wrapped a set of Duck Dynasty shot glasses for her and had to instead give them to my sister-in-law who collects shot glasses. So this book kind of makes me think of her. And will again when I pick it out of the stacks in a decade.
• Weird Hikes: A Collection of Bizarre, Funny, and Absolutely True Hiking Stories by Art Bernstein. I was clearly on a roll clicking Add to Cart.
• Memories from a Misty Morning Marsh: A Duck Hunter’s Collection by Larry Dablemont. The Current Local, a news weekly out of Van Buren, Missouri, to which I subscribe has started running a column by Dablemont, and I enjoy it. So when I saw a book by this author, I jumped on it. I expect I will like it as I have other books by local columnists Jerry Crownover and Jim Hamilton.
• Books by Larry McMurtry. The author owned a bookstore. Did you know that? I did from an essay I read in some academic writing magazine circa 1994 (the essay, “One Writer’s Big Innings“, is available for the Kindle).
• Made to Be Broken: The 50 Greatest Records and Streaks in Modern History by Allen St. John. It’s a coffee table book, and looks a little too wordy for browsing during a sporting event. Not that we have those any more. So perhaps I will browse this in lieu of actual sporting events soon.
• Brett Favre: The Tribute, a Sport Illustrated coffee table book.
• Danica Patrick: America’s Hottest Racer by Jonathan Ingram and Paul Webb. For Trog, who’s no longer blogging but whose Danica Patrick fascination remains legendary. The book is from 2005. She looks so young. I am pretty sure I was not young in 2005.

Before shipping them, the staff removed the ABC Books stickers from them, which won’t be helpful should the proprietrix see me during the Sunday school hour if the government ever lets us go to church again. Without the sticker, I will likely not know where I got the books, and I might hide books I should flaunt.

This represents only the first order I placed. I placed another order Sunday night as I was looking for a couple of titles for my boys to read whilst we’re homeschooling them. And I added a couple other items to the cart because why not. Hopefully, the owners of ABC Books will be all right through the current unpleasantness. If not, it won’t be due to lack of effort on my part.