{"id":34860,"date":"2026-02-01T07:53:02","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T13:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=34860"},"modified":"2026-01-31T18:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T00:20:08","slug":"good-book-hunting-january-31-2026-abc-books-and-hooked-on-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/01\/good-book-hunting-january-31-2026-abc-books-and-hooked-on-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Book Hunting, January 31, 2026: ABC Books and Hooked on Books"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had to go into town yesterday afternoon to pick my beautiful wife up from a short church-related trip she took, so of course I left a couple hours early so I could go to ABC Books because they had a book signing and Hooked on Books because I had a gift certificate.<\/p>\n<p>So I bought a couple things.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/gbh01312026.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>At ABC Books, I got:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>The Sins of the Fathers<\/em> by Stanley Schmidt.  It talks about a space ship that goes to the past and comes back with one person on it who is insane.  Sounds like the plot for <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Event_Horizon_(film)\" target=\"_new\">Event Horizon<\/em><\/a>.  I&#8217;m hoping it has a flashback or part of it set in the past because I need a &#8220;Set In Two Time Periods&#8221; book in February.<\/li>\n<li><em>The Wicked Among Us<\/em> by James Owen.  The cover says &#8220;Murder, Blackmail, and Book Collecting in the Ozarks.&#8221;  It&#8217;s a true crimish thing based on a murder that occurred in the Springfield area a couple years before I got here.  The author had a line of people&#8211;I guess some people knew him, and a radio station mentioned the book signing (and he mentioned he&#8217;d already sold 1000.  Maybe 1500).  Clearly, it was not an instance of me being the only one buying the book or one of a couple sold.  But the book looks interesting.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I got a $50 gift certificate from Hooked on Books for Christmas, which is odd: although it is probably the closest used book store, I don&#8217;t go there that often any more&#8211;I came more frequently when I lived in St. Louis (probably).  And I struggled to find something to buy, gentle reader.  I started on the south side of the store, looking at the mysteries to see if they had any old John D. MacDonalds&#8211;as I mentioned, a long time ago, they had a lot, and not expensive, but I didn&#8217;t buy a lot because I thought they would always be there.  I made my way through the science fiction section, looking for a title that said Set in Two Time Periods.  I looked at their shrunken philosophy section.  I inspected the incomplete classic literature sets.  I made my way to the north wall and looked at &#8220;collectible&#8221; (basically, just old) books.  But when I got to the eastern corner of the store, opposite of where I started, I found <em>the martial arts section<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I got:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Nightmare in Pink<\/em> in paperback (so old that it was not labeled&#8211;so it might have been one I overlooked back in the day&#8211;and <em>A Deadly Shade of Gold<\/em>, the 1974 first hardback printing (this one first appeared in paperback).  $2 and $6 respectively.  I&#8217;ll have to check my collection to see what I actually have and what I am missing and mindfully seek to fill the gaps.<\/li>\n<li><em>Why We Suck<\/em> by Denis Leary.  It was $7.50; they had a trade paperback which I also looked at, but it was only fifty cents cheaper, so I went for the hardback.<\/li>\n<li><em>How Things Stack Up<\/em>, a collection of poetry (signed and inscribed, but not to me or anyone I know) by Michael Castro, the former editor of <em>River Styx<\/em>.  You know, he might have hosted the poetry readings at Brandt&#8217;s on Sunday nights which I used to lure and ensnare a pretty poet living in Columbia in 1997.<\/li>\n<li><em>Moon City Review<\/em> 2020, a local literary magazine which has rejected me several times.  I&#8217;ll look to see what they like.  Or what the students liked in the before times.<\/li>\n<li><em>Comprehensive Applications of Shaolin Chin Na<\/em> by Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming.  $12.50.<\/li>\n<li><em>Krav Maga: Real World Solutions to Real World Violence<\/em> by Gershon Ben Keren.  They have several krav maga books; I just got one (so far).<\/li>\n<li><em>The Overlook Martial Arts Reader<\/em> edited by Randy F. Nelson.  Subtitle: &#8220;Classic Writings on Philosophy and Technique.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All told, I spent&#8230;.  Nothing.  I had the gift certificate and the remnant of a gift card for sitting through a timeshare presentation (of which, I have a couple dollars left toward a grocery bill).<\/p>\n<p>Two of the martial arts books have <strong>Bee<\/strong> written on the top and bottom but no library marks on them.  I noticed these on a couple of the Story of Civilization books I bought <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/05\/good-book-hunting-may-5-2019-friends-of-the-springfield-greene-county-library-book-sale\/\" target=\"_new\">in 2019<\/a>.  I wonder what school or organization marks their books this way.  I&#8217;ll have to ask Mrs. E. if she knows next time I&#8217;m at ABC Books.  I&#8217;m not sure the twenty-somethings working the counter at Hooked on Books would know.<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, something to fit into my bookshelves somehow and to work on&#8230;.  Sometime.  After the <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/20\/a-look-ahead\/\" target=\"_new\">2026 Winter Reading Challenge<\/a>.  So, maybe&#8230;. Next week!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had to go into town yesterday afternoon to pick my beautiful wife up from a short church-related trip she took, so of course I left a couple hours early so I could go to ABC Books because they had a book signing and Hooked on Books because I had a gift certificate. So I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34860"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34864,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34860\/revisions\/34864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}