Musings from Brian J. Noggle: Good Book Hunting: April 5, 2008

Good Book Hunting: April 5, 2008

So this weekend marked the first really dangerous book fair of the season: The St. John's United Church of Christ book fair. We went to this one last year, so I knew what to expect: I picked up a box right when I went through the door instead of pretending I was only going to buy one or two things and then picking up a box after I accumulated a dozen books.

In the end, I needed two boxes for my books, not including the books for the other residents here. The stacks:

St. John's 2008 offerings to the Noggle Library

Click for full size

To sum up my acquisitions:

19 volumes of the Time-Life Books series The Great Ages of Man. Okay, it's apparently 18 volumes (1 duplicate) from the (I know see) 21 volume set. Still, a nice primer on some history stuff. Good idea books, I hope. As I get older, I'm acquiring more and more of these sets so that I or my children will have them to kind of page through in a way you really can't with Wikipedia.
A couple Dell Shannon mysteries. He wrote mysteries in the 1960s where the crimes are all fairly minor. They're police procedurals, and sort of pastoral police procedurals now.
A couple of Mike Shayne paperbacks. Good, short pulp bits that I cut my teeth on when I was a lad.
The April Robin Murders, a paperback co-written by Ed McBain?
Take the Money and Die, a paperback mystery I bought simply because it was that close to the others I picked up. Seriously. Collateral collectage.
No Witnesses by Ridley Pearson, a writer from the next suburb whose work I have yet to read. I own one of his books in Swedish, so it's nice to have something by him that I can read.
A stack of gardening books because I've planted some things. Most of them are small, brochurish things from the 1940s and 1950s.
Coping in the 80s because I want to see how I managed.
Tantalizing Locked Room Mysteries.
A biography of Robert Burns because I don't already have one.
Dickens's Hard Times and Steinbeck's Cannery Row to pile onto my classical material.
A couple of Rod McKuen books, Lonesome Cities and And to Each Season, so I can screw up the next childright from birth, too.
On Flirtation, a psych book about flirting.
A book by Bob Hope from the 1960s. You know, I've not read any book by him. He can't be worse than Sinbad or Judy Tenuta.
The Giant Book of Insults because I have a long list of people to insult.
Literary St. Louis: A Guide. Ironic, isn't it, that I'm actively catching up to William Gass (I hope) with one of his books?
Godless by Ann Coulter. It's worth a buck, and she's not getting any portion of it.
Gravity by Tess Gerritsen. At the checkout, my wife said she already owned a copy. However, she is not me. Now I own a copy and will read it, eventually.
The World of George Orwell, a picture and sort of bio of Eric Blair. Because (say it with me), I didn't own one already.

I also got two videocassettes, National Lampoon's Class Reunion and Pink Floyd at Pompeii. They were $2.00 each; had I known that, I would not have gotten the first. Had I seen it before I bought it, I wouldn't have spent another dollar on it.

Total spent: $61.75. Total books for me: 48. Total for household: 61.

Looks like I'm going to have to forgo some heavy reading for a bit to clear some of the backlog.

And the Old Trees and Kirkwood library friends, not to mention the Carondolet Y book fair, are still to come this year.

- posted by Brian J. @ 12:21 PM