Musings from Brian J. Noggle: Good Book Hunting: September 15, 2007

Good Book Hunting: September 15, 2007

This weekend, we hit a couple of garage sales around our municipality, and we had a better result. For starters, it was less annoying; even though our occasional neighbors in Old Trees have signs proclaiming support for drawing and quartering the head of the nation, they're less frequent than the "we control the horizontal; we control the vertical" nature of the signs in Kirkwood. Also, I found more books, including:

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The Warden/Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope. Because it was an old edition, and I remember the name Trollope from something. Maybe I was thinking of Lionel Trilling, come to think of it. Oh, well, what will it hurt? I mean, other than these are the first two in a series of books set in Britain in the 19th century.
Finch's Fortune and Wakefield's Course, two novels in a series about life at the Jalna homestead, home of the Whiteoak family, which take place in Canada in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Mazo de la Roche of Jalna, a book about the author of the preceding books. Apparently, I have the fruits of one of de la Roche's two American fans.
How to Read a Poem, in case I have been doing it wrong. I suspect most academics would tell me I have.
London in Dickens' Day, a book that should help ground the Dickens books I'll be reading. As you remember, in my report for Oliver Twist, I lamented that all pre-20th century books' historical details kind of blurred.
The Sociopath Next Door, so I can learn if I am tipping my pitches.
Spanish Step by Step, so when I go on a refresher kick, I'll have one more textbook to read.
Rhineland: Winter in a Missouri River Town, a low print run, very local history sort of book just because I could.

Additionally, I bought three VHS tapes to watch on a tiny 25" screen where the quality won't suffer (yeah, verily, I said 25" was tiny, because in the 21st century friends, it's iPod screens or what we used to call "Big Screen" televisions). These include:

Mallrats, which I think is probably Smith's second best work (after Chasing Amy); reviewing this will help firm up or reject that thesis.
Dirty Work, Norm MacDonald's finest work excluding the Hardee's star voiceover work.
Kentucky Fried Movie, which I have never seen even though it's Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker film.

Also, I got two record albums of jazz and big band sort of music and two CDs of the University City (Missouri) Symphony Orchestra. I didn't even know U City had a symphony orchestra.

Tomorrow is another Saturday, so no doubt I'll be trolling for a couple more books.

- posted by Brian J. @ 2:13 PM