{"id":30696,"date":"2023-01-16T08:08:52","date_gmt":"2023-01-16T14:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=30696"},"modified":"2023-01-15T14:06:12","modified_gmt":"2023-01-15T20:06:12","slug":"good-book-hunting-saturday-january-14-2023-abc-books-gift-card-redemption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/16\/good-book-hunting-saturday-january-14-2023-abc-books-gift-card-redemption\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Book Hunting, Saturday, January 14, 2023: ABC Books Gift Card Redemption"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friends, on Saturday, I went to ABC Books with gift cards in hand. I received a $50 card for Christmas, and I have $34 remaining on a Visa gift card, so I tucked three remaining $20 “You need a gift now<\/em>?” gift cards (the “You need a gift now<\/em>?” gifts previously had been bubble wands, inexpensive art kits, or Legos for the times when a child would announce he was invited to a birthday party the morning of the birthday party and produce a wrinkled invitation from somewhere in his school pack, but they’ve gotten too old for that–they might have outgrown getting invited to birthdays as well, as it has been years) into my pocket. That gave me roughly $150 in not real money to spend, and I knew I had a couple of more expensive books that I’d had my eyes on for the occasion when I was feeling flush, and although we are not flush right now with real money, I was ballin’ with gift cards.<\/p>\n

So we got there, and I could not find anything<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The curse of the gift card. I can walk into ABC Books and find $100 worth of books when it’s my own money (and when an author is signing his or her books), but when I go there with a gift card, I cannot find anything to buy. I’ve had this problem at Barnes and Noble, Vintage Stock, you name it.<\/p>\n

I mean, the nice copy of Homage to Catalonia<\/em> by George Orwell that I’ve been hankering for since I listened to The World of George Orwell<\/a><\/em> before the COVID lockdowns is $199.95, and the Folio Society and Eaton editions are not 25% of currently (they often are). There’s a nice set of the complete works of James Whitcomb Riley–I enjoyed his Little Orphant Annie and Other Poems<\/em><\/a> Dover collection in 2018–but, come on, am I going to read those 10 volumes? I’m certainly a little at a loss for room for a nice set of 10 in the Nogglestead library.<\/p>\n

The martial arts section remains empty. I looked at the artist monographs down the aisle, and I spotted a couple of collections of photography that I could use to satisfy the 2023 Winter Reading Challenge<\/a>‘s Pictorial category–a collection of photos of Big Sur, California, a collection of the Grand Canyon, or photos from Marilyn Monroe’s last session, but these collections were fifty dollars or more, and that’s a lot for an hour’s worth of browsing to tick off a category in the reading challenge.<\/p>\n

So I almost came out empty handed.<\/p>\n

But not quite.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I got:<\/p>\n