It has been five years since I’ve been to a Friends of the Christian County Library book sale. In the old days, they were held in Ozark, Missouri, (and Clever had its own little library which also had an annual book sale). In 2019, I found my way to the new Nixa HQ of the library for the book sale. Last month, I was at that branch again as my beautiful wife was participating in a presentation about Artificial Intelligence, and I grabbed a bookmark/flyer that has the four(!) sales in 2024 rotating amongst branches, and so we made our way down to Clever and its new branch of the Christian County Library for a sale this morning.
And it was bag day, so….
My beautiful wife got some cookbooks and a couple of books for my youngest who has an advanced placement class in American government coming up, and I got two bags’ worth, including:
- Twelve Louis L’Amour books, four paperbacks and three library bindings. Titles include: Hondo, Silver Canyon, Guns of the Timberlands (two different editions, apparently),How the West Was Won, Son of a Wanted Man, The Man Called Noon, Taggart, Over on the Dry Side, Westward the Tide, Fair Blows the Wind, and The Man From Skibbereen. One of the fellows at the sale said they have a set of his books coming up for sale as a set next time, and I guess I will be there to maybe buy it.
- Two Patrick O’Brian novels, Post Captain (which I now see is coming undone at the binding) and The Nutmeg of Consolation. Post Captain is the second title in the Aubrey/Maturin books. It’s been some years (fifteen since I read the first book in the series. Now I can continue my reading of them in order.
- Two relatively recent Carl Hiaasen novels, Bad Monkey (2013) and Razor Girl (2016). The cover of the latter says Author of Bad Monkey because apparently people influenced by that kind of blurb in their purchase aren’t the ones who would remember a book from the 20th century in that position.
- Dangerous Minds by Janet Evanovich, a Knight and Moon novel. Not part of the Stephanie Plum series.
- Voyage of the Armada by David Howarth about the Spanish Armada, perhaps from the Spanish perspective.
- Diary by Chuck Palahniuk who was apparently a thing at sometime, but I missed it.
- Of Men and War by John Hersey, five true stories from World War II by a war correspondent.
- The Carrier War by Edwin P. Hoyt about World War II, natch.
- Hornblower and the Crisis by C.S. Forester with a cover blurb by Hemingway.
- Dave Barry is from Mars and Venus by Dave Barry. They had several titles, but I am pretty sure I have the others.
- Great Flying Stories edited by Frank W. Anderson, Jr. Looks to be short stories.
- The Enforcer by “Happy Jack” Burbridge, a thug who found Jesus.
- Smirnoff for the Soul by Yakov Smirnoff. Signed, of course, because Yakov has a show in Branson from time-to-time, and if you haven’t gotten your book signed by him, you must be trying to avoid him.
- Post Scripts Humor from the Saturday Evening Post, a collection of jokes and cartoons which I will probably read soon if I don’t lose the book in the stacks in a couple of minutes when I put these all up.
- This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism by Ashton Applewhite.
- All My Best Friends by George Burns with David Fisher. I don’t think I’ve read it.
- Vermont is Always with You by Marguerite Hurrey Wolf. The name seemed familiar, but that’s because I just read her book The Sheep’s in the Meadow, the Raccoon’s in the Corn. Where solving for “just” in this case yields a result of 2017.
- Live from the Tiki Lounge by Angela Williams. It might have been the only book of poetry in the room.
- We’ll Be Back Tomorrow by Patty Chandler.
- The Art of W.C. Fields by William K. Everson. Not about painting, but more a biography.
- Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen. It’s a relatively new book (originally 1995, but the paperback is 2007), so we will have to see what kinds of lies he means exactly.
- Scientific Progress Goes “Bonk” by Will Watterson. A collection of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. I might actually read this before the Saturday Evening Post collection.
- The True Story of the Death Railway & The Bridge on the River Kwai. Given that the cover price is 230 B (presumably bahts), this looks to be a Thai book produced for tourists. One wonders if it belonged to a World War II vet. Given the other books I grabbed, one wonders if they came from a single person’s library.
That’s 36 books for about 6 dollars ($3 a bag), so that is quite a steal. And because the sale is not so huge, I was able to browse them all and pick up some fiction which rarely happens at the big sale in Springfield.
So I have until August until the next one. How many of these do you think I will read by then? I say: Two.
