Good Book Hunting, June 20, 2020: ABC Books

My beautiful wife participated in a virtual bike ride Saturday in part by riding around the annual Republic Pregnancy Resource Center Happy Feet 5k run course to look after participants whilst we ran it. To pick up her t-shirt for the bike ride, she had to go to an event space way up north, which is to say, right by ABC Books.

So we made a family outing of it.

I found a little something that I didn’t order during the lock-in:

I got:

• Superstar, a novel by Christopher Long, about a singer on top of the world who is not happy. The author has been to ABC Books numerous times, mostly on weeknights. And Ms. E., the proprietrix, bought some marketing t-shirts to give away with each purchase of the book. I declined as my t-shirt drawer is already bulging from athletic event t-shirts, not yet including the shirt from today’s run with my company’s logo on the sleeve.
• Ain’t No Such Animal by Larry Dablemont. I actually ordered another of his books from ABC Books in March. I was very pleased to learn as I prepared this post that it was not the same book.
• My Name Is Rock by Jeff Patrick, a thriller in a series about a special agent. The author has a whole stand-up display at ABC Books, so he’s invested in his book. And if I like it, there are others in the series.
• The Violet Hour by Richard Greenberg, a play about a publisher starting out who has to choose between his lover’s book and his best friend’s book, and something zany and magical happens.
• Loveroot by Erica Jong. I read her How To Save Your Own Life before I started this blog and wasn’t impressed. I can only hope I like this collection of poems as much as Danielle Steele’s Love.
• Two monographs: Charles Russell, a western (cowboys and indians) artist, and Georgia O’Keeffe. Both look to be mostly images and some text, the kind of thing I would flip through whilst watching football, although I’m not sure whether there will be football this year or whether I will watch it. Basically, I am coming to enjoy flipping through these on their own with no sporting event at all. And they count as a full book no matter how little text they have.

As she was ringing me out, I asked Ms. E. to drop the hundreds place when she announced the total out loud. And she did.. Well, the total, including a couple books for the boys (not depicted) was just a shade under $100 (the local author books were dull price and the monographs were $10 each). But a bibliophile has to do what he can when the spring book sales were cancelled and the fall ones are in jeopardy.