Musings from Brian J. Noggle

I didn’t put it there.

I did, however, move it to the proper place since the volunteers didn’t recognize it.

So we took the semiannual pilgrimage to Ozark to pick out books from the side room of the Christian County Library. We got there at a little after six, but it was not crowded–dealers were not out in force scanning every book in the joint to find something profitable, which could well mean that the book market is cratering. How would I know? It is not for me.

At any rate, the boys found a stack of books and delighted everyone by continually proclaiming how many they found, and that the children’s books were only fifty cents. Their selections are not depicted in the image below, again, as they made off with them immediately.

I got:

• Two history courses from The Teaching Company probably for three dollars each: A Brief History of the World and The African Experience: From “Lucy” to Mandela. My oldest son asked me why Africa had an experience instead of the history. Ah, the things one knows but cannot explain logically.
   
• Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii, a paperback based on the television series. I think I have another one around here somewhere for when I go on a kick. Or find them.
   
• James Wesley, Rawles’ Founders, a novel. I was afraid I’d recently bought this, but I bought How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It in Hot Springs this summer. So when I go on a kick or can find them.
   
• Unbroken, the story of Louis Zamperini as told by the woman who wrote Seabiscuit. This is a nice hardback copy, but I thought I’d recently bought this book. But I did not: instead, I picked up a paperback copy of The Devil At My Heels, Zamperini’s autobiography. So I can read them back to back if I go on a kick. Or can find them.
   
• A copy of Ulysses Grant’s memoirs (and selected letters). Gentle reader, the most expensive books I own are probably the first edition two volume set of U.S. Grant’s memoirs that I inherited from my wife’s uncle. I was seriously just recently thinking I want a reading copy of these books so I don’t get Doritos dust in the first editions, and here they are. It’s crazy how you sometimes find what you’re looking for.
   
• Lassie, Come Home. I might or might not have a copy of this already–I think I have a worn copy that fell to the children, not that they read any of the books about dogs or horses that I received but did not read in my youth. At any rate, I’ll read this juvenile classic at some point to pad my annual numbers.
   
• A Christian Manifesto by Francis Schaeffer which I bought because I remember that I read Escape from Reason eleven years ago. Although until I read my own book report on it, I did not remember the actual content of the book. This volume’s title is probably more meaningful.
   
• The Devil Wins, another crack at Jesse Stone by Reed Farrel Coleman. I almost put this down several times because I was not pleased with his first try.
   
• A Thomas Kinkade Cape Light Christmas book whose title is so meaningful that it’s covered by the library sticker on the spine. The title is actually A Christmas Promise. I’ve already read a Cape Light Christmas book: All Is Bright by the co-author of this book. I’ve been stockpiling Christmas books this year, so perhaps I’ll read more than one at Christmas time.
   
• Rabbit, Run by John Irving. I haven’t read any Irving that I recall (Well, Washington Irving, but that’s a way different guy. This is the first of the Rabbit series, so I might as well start here.
   
• The Lost Books of the Bible which goes right into my recent reading on the same.
   
• How to Restore a Farm Tractor. I’ve been thinking about doing this, maybe. I must be downwind from Republic’s annual old machine festival Steam-O-Rama or something. Of course, I don’t have the time to take care of needed maintenance on Nogglestead, so I don’t know when I’d fit working on this new hobby of my daydreams. I don’t even know how long it will be until I read the book.
   
• Mysteries of the Bible, a Reader’s Digest book akin to Mysteries of the Unexplained. Probably short anecdotes that aren’t actual Bible scholarship, but starting points for inquiries.
   
• Trash to Treasure. I’ve read a couple in this series (2, 6, and 8, but not in that order) back in my crafty days. Perhaps this will jump start me into doing projects again and clear some of the raw material from my garage. Or perhaps I’ll need to clean out my garage first so I can get to the raw material.

My beautiful wife almost got a stack as tall as mine, but not quite Try harder next time, my dear.

At any rate, it was a fun little jaunt, and you know, I rather enjoy writing these posts and wandering a bit down memory lane recalling books I’ve bought before and sometimes even read. So unfortunately, gentle reader, these self-indulgent posts will continue.

I know you’re wondering, “Brian J., did you and your beautiful wife actually drive 58 miles to go to a book sale?” Yes, gentle reader, we did. She spotted the book sale somewhere, and we decided to make an afternoon date of it. So we ate some lunch at Da Vinci’s , which might be the best Italian restaurant in Lebanon, but we have no way of really knowing as we’ve only eaten at one place in Lebanon. And we found the back room of the Lebanon-Laclede County Library, where they hold the semi-annual sale.

It was weird: The books were on shelves, not on tables. Somehow, that just made it feel very odd for us. Browsing books on a table is kind of ergonomic; they’re generally the same height, and you can scan the titles quickly. When they’re on shelves, you have to stoop and reach and whatnot. “But, Brian J., isn’t that just like the used book stores you like to frequent?” Well, yes, but my browsing at used book stores tends to be a little more selective, and my purchases a little more limited.

As it was this Friday.

I got:

• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Wait, didn’t I already read that just this year? Can I have forgotten it already? No, this is the Reader’s Digest World’s Best Reading edition, and I collect those. So I had to spend the dollar to get it. As a bonus: I can put it with the others of its type on my read shelves automatically without having to read it again!
• True at First Light by Hemingway.
• The First Man by Camus.
• Pop Art and Rococo: A Style of Fantasy, a couple of art books on styles I’m not overly familiar with. One day, some day, I might sound as smart as Lileks or Driscoll.
• The Tao of Meow, which sounds like it might be a Taoist book about cats, but it looks to be a collection of humorous verse akin to I Could Pee On This And Other Poems By Cats.
• History of China which looks to be less an in-depth history than a history and picture book like the Time-Life series.

My beautiful wife got a stack of magazines, a number of Daniel Silva suspense novels, and a cat puzzle that our nine-year-old has already halfway completed on the very table where I took the photo.

I also got four records:

• 3 by Earth Wind and Fire.
• Hooked on Classics II.
• The Best of Dean Martin.
• The Wiz original cast recording.

The record pickings were limited to two boxes. I suspect I’ll get more at the big Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library book sale in a couple of weeks, but even then, the days of buying tens of records is probably at an end. I’m getting a little more selective in my purchases, as I’ve bought most of what I know I like by now. But then again, they might have a stack of pop records from Italy in the 1970s, and I’ll want them all.

Note, gentle reader, that this is not the furthest we’ve gone round trip for a book sale. Ten years ago, we went sixty-five miles round trip from Old Trees, Missouri, to Greenville, Illinois.

To think, I am still buying books.

So a couple weeks ago, the owner of ABC Books posted on Facebook that they were “drowning” in books and would no longer be accepting books for trade.

So I immediately responded to the distress call and immediately several weeks later sprang into action.

I had planned to go there with my children as they were off school, and it’s one of the trips we take as we spend days together. My beautiful wife wanted to go to spend her Christmas gift card(s), so we waited until she finished her work day and packed off to ABC Books. When we got there, we ran into a pastor from our church and his family. Which is not surprising, as the book store is owned by a couple from church. But it made me feel part of a community, running into people I know about town.

At any rate, you’re all wondering what I got? A couple of books courtesy the gift card I have my beautiful wife for Christmas:

Here’s my list:

• Strength Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath. My beautiful wife took this test and found it useful, and she found a copy with its Internet code envelope intact, so we got a really good deal on it. I think she might have been planning this for me for Christmas, but I can take the quiz before then.
   
• Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus by Karl Barth.
   
• Everyday Zen by Charlotte Joko Beck. Although I don’t plan to become a Zen master, I do enjoy reading about it.
   
• The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Bible which I expect to be very much unlike Asimov’s Guide to the Bible which I read in 2015 but apparently did not review.
   
• A nice edition of The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine.

Most notable was the things I put down. I picked up a translation of Confucius’s Analects. Which I I just read. However, this edition broke up the sayings with the original Chinese, so it looked more digestible. I also forwent a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I’ve been thinking about reading this, but I think I have a copy somewhere already. The urge to read it has not been such that I’ve gone looking for it, but it also wasn’t enough for me to buy another copy in case I was mistaken.

I pawed around the church history and books on the Bible section looking for something that distills the evolution of the Bible and why the things that were not included were not included (including the things that didn’t make it into the Protestant versions of the Bible but remain in the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles). You know, I had a pastor there I could have asked, but I did not. Well, I’ll see him in a couple of days and should remember to ask then.

At any rate, my beautiful wife got two books, including one I already own (To Engineer Is Human), but she got her own copy even after I mentioned it. Partly because she likes to mark books up and partly (mostly) because she knows I wouldn’t be able to find my copy for a couple years.

At any rate, that should hold me for a couple of days, anyway. But the semiannual book sales start in a couple weeks.

We had a little time to kill between appointments yesterday, so we stopped into Hooked on Books for a couple minutes.

Which is all I needed.

I got four from the dollar books section and two from the philosophy section.

• Cat Fear No Evil, one of the Joe Grey mysteries by Shirley Rosseau Murphy, who wrote The Catswald Portal. I thought about checking the series out, and here is one for a dollar. Can’t miss for that.
   
• The Maine Lobster Book by Mike Brown. Looks to be similar to The Lobster Chronicles. Which reminds me: When I hunger for this sort of literature, I have a couple of Linda Greenlaw’s other books floating around here somewhere.
   
• Plain and Simple: A Woman’s Journey to the Amish by Sue Bender.
   
• The New Prince which promises or threatens to be an update to Machiavelli’s treatise. This volume is by Dick Morris, the political consultant, so who knows its worth–I will someday, perhaps. I did allude to the original in a book report yesterday, so of course I was primed for this book.
   
• The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra. This is the thirty-fifth anniversary edition, and it was right next to the twenty-fifth anniversary edition, which indicates that this has remained in print for a while. Probably more relevant than The Tao of Elvis.
   
• Spirit of Shaolin by David Carradine. The actor from the two Kung Fu television series talks about his exploration of Eastern thought and martial arts. The book was written three years after his turn in Warlords.

At any rate, a good couple of minutes. I look forward to reading these books, but unfortunately, I will put them on my to-read bookshelves, where they will be lost for years.

Yesterday, we found ourselves in Branson, Missouri, with a little time on our hands, so we visited:

• Calvin’s Used Books (one of the best used book stores in Missouri last I heard), where I bought a number of books because at $2 each, that’s almost as good as $1 each.
   
• The Shepherd of the Hills Humane Society Thrift Store, where the books were significantly cheaper. I walked out with a box full of books for a buck fifty.
   
• The State of the Ozarks festival in Hollister, which had a couple of booths with comic book and regular book authors, and I always like to pick up some of their work, although I don’t tend to get to the books quickly.

I got:

• Five comic books from Anthony Hunter: Two issues of Lame Brains and the first three issues of Silent Sillies. Which proves my thoughts of “Are these the last comic books I ever read?” were indeed premature.
   
• The Proof of God by Larry Witham.
   
• Three by the lately departed Jerry Pournelle: Janissaries (which I bought even though its front cover is almost completely detached), Exiles to Glory, and King David’s Spaceship.
   
• Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt
   
• Six Easy Pieces by Richard P. Feynman
   
• The Wards of Iasos by local author J. Cristopher Wilson. I saw him at LibraryCon 2017, but he was speaking in a panel when I passed by his table on the way out, so I didn’t buy his book. I saw him and caught a little of a talk he gave at the Ozark Mini Maker Faire the next week. When I saw him yesterday at a table in Hollister, his old home town, I told him if he was going to keep following me to fairs and festivals, I’d buy his book. Now, when I see him around, I’ll remind him of that.
   
• “A” is for Alibi by Sue Grafton. It’s an early edition, but I think it’s book club.
   
• The Face by David St. John, a novella in verse.
   
• Voodoo, Ltd. by Ross Thomas. I’ve already read it, but the copy I read is paperback, and this is a first printing. Note to self: Do not put this on the to-read shelves, or I will have to read it again before I move it to the read shelves. THERE ARE RULES.
   
• Finding my Father by Rod McKuen. It’s prose and looks to be a memoir of some sort with a title Roger Waters and I can appreciate.
   
• The Mycenean World by John Chadwick.
   
• Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen. He takes a lot of hits from non-believers and otherly denominated Christians, but what is his theology? I aim to find out.
   
• A companion to the television/video series Charlton Heston Presents The Bible. Without the video.
   
• Two books of photography, both called simply San Francisco.
   
• The World of Herb Caen by Barnaby Conrad about the legendary San Francisco columnist, and by “legendary,” I mean “mostly forgotten by the illiterate generations following ours.”
   
• The Cotswolds, a picture and guide book to that region of England, because I haven’t read a Cotswold or similarly named book in weeks.

Someone from San Francisco (or a Friscophile) donated a bunch of books to the thrift store, as there were volumes of Rod McKuen poems along with the picture books and memoir I snagged above.

My wife got a couple of Daniel Silva books she read as library books and wants to re-read and a copy of an inspirational book, Joni, to replace a copy she recently gave away. The boys got three or four books themselves, but these are not pictured because they’ve already taken them away and probably have read most of them by now.

This should keep me in browsing and reading for a bit. Now, to get to finishing the books I have half-completed so I can get to them, maybe. Except for the Ross Thomas book. I really, really have to remember to put that on the read shelves.