Good Book Hunting, November 19, 2021: Hooked on Books

It’s been a while since I’ve had a little time to kill by my youngest son’s school, but his archery practice let off an hour and a half before the basketball games, so we scarfed some McDonalds. Which did not kill an hour and a half. Fortunately, Hooked on Books, almost across the street, is open until six, so we got a chance to browse.

Of course, I hit the dollar/fifty cent books in front of the store. In the dark, since it was 5:30. And then I hit the dwindling dollar books room in the back. And the cart of cheap books at the end of the mystery section. They haven’t moved them.

However, I did pick out a couple of art monographs and a philosophy comic book at full price. I happened to be in the philosophy section looking for some Leibniz, but, c’mon, man, this is the 21st century. No used bookstores not located on university campuses are going to have source material from the seventeenth century.

At any rate, here is what I got:

Titles include:

• Ninja by Eric Van Lustbader. Because it says Ninja on the front and sprawling erotic thriller on the back, which probably means lurid and not well-versed in actual martial arts.
• Get Out Of I.T. While You Can by Craig Schiefelbein, a self published book from 2007.
• Tin House magazine Volume 16, Number 3, which I can stack amongst all the other literary magazines I’ve been meaning to read when not distracted by sprawling erotic thrillers.
• Acorns from an Aging Oak by John C. Allen which looks to be some grandpa poetry for a change.
• Field Stones by Robert Kinsley, the less expensive of the two Kinsley titles they offer. The authors photograph on the back is very serious, so I’m worried they will be a bit academic. Now that I read the author bio, I see he’s the editor of a literary magazine. So.
• Philosophy for Beginners by Richard Osborne. It’s in the same series as Einstein for Beginners, so I am sure it will be chock full of straight-up Marxist fun.
• Antoine Watteau, a Henry N. Abram monograph about said artist for browsing during football games.
• Edward Hopper: A Modern Master by Ita G. Berkow. I picked up this monograph because it was the less expensive of the two Hopper books they had, and earlier this week, I saw someone talking about how Hopper was one of their favorites, but I’ve forgotten where. But what I read on blogs continues to influence my purchasing decisions.

As I stacked the books on my to-read shelves atop other books, I thought, Man, I need to read more. I have only been getting in an hour some nights as we handle the boys’ activities and whatnot. Of course, in a couple of years, I won’t have to keep one ear open all night for the boys, so I will have time for projects and reading and whatnot. And I will be both happy and sad.

THIS JUST IN: When I mentioned to my beautiful wife I bought a sprawling erotic thriller, she laughed. But when I mentioned the name Lustbader which sounds just like the nom de some off color joke here of an erotic thriller writer, she said she’d heard of him as he’s the guy who took over the Jason Bourne series for Ludlum. So I guess that’s his real name. And this book is the first in a series that has run (so far) from 1980 to 2016 (an ebook short story). So I guess that is his real name, and I’m not looking at a fat mash-up of Kung Fu featuring Mace and The Gunsmith. I have put it on the table beside my reading chair anyway.