reading rainbow
I believe I'll be indulging in buying a Flickr pro account, since I've already run up against the "only display the 200 most recent pictures" limit, and I've got a ton of pictures and videos to upload from Comic-Con. I could use YouTube for the videos but I'd rather have them all in one place anyhow. So as soon as that's done I'm working on a recap of all that wackiness, but in the meantime I wanted to talk about my favorite annual used book sale.
I was raised Catholic, but ever since I rebel without a caused my way out of the last stages of CCD my closest affiliation with the Church has been showing up to the yearly carnival, throwing some dimes at dishes to try to win an ashtray, riding the rinky dink rides (until last year when I finally decided being motion sick all night isn't worth two minutes of exhilaration on the Zipper), and buying books at the book sale. I seem to remember they used to be a quarter a paperback and fiddy cents for hard, but like everything else the prices have gone up and nowadays they're $0.50 and $1. All the parishioners just donate all their extra books, so you get an eclectic mix of last year's hot book club books, plenty of churchy stuff and just random old stuff they pulled from their garages. My favorite thing to do is go in with an idea of one or two things I want, and then just pick up whatever else sparks my interest. To illustrate, here's the haul from 2005:
No, the Sin City book I got at Borders. I guess I thought it was important enough to document since it was the very first Sin City I bought after the movie, I've got them all now. Moving on, the first few books you see are among the churchy stuff I mentioned. The Catholic Source Book I bought in the hopes that it would be a good reference for the post-apocalyptic magical realism epic I thought I was about to write. Along those same optimistic lines, we've got the MLA Handbook and How Writers Write. The Jungle Book represents the entry from the "pick up old favorites on the cheap" category, and then we've got the noir. I've always been interested in true crime stories and the Black Dahlia in particular, so I jumped at the chance to pick up the Ellroy book. I had also just heard of this pulp author John D. MacDonald, and it was a complete shock to find, just a few weeks later, a whole buttload of books by the guy with amazingly awesome names like The Dreadful Lemon Sky and Cancel All Our Vows, that I could pick up for two bits apiece. I've never gotten around to reading them, but I like knowing they're there when I'm ready.
Here's this year:
All for six bucks. I didn't have much in mind to pick up so I asked my best buddy if he wanted anything. He asked for short stories and anything Orson Scott Card, and as always the church book sale provided, with 50 Great Short Stories (mostly old boring ones, but it has The Lottery, worth the purchase price alone), Ender's Game and one neither of us have read, Lost Boys. For myself, the only thing I had in mind was The Catcher in the Rye thanks to the recent recommendation and I found that too so I was batting 100%. The Christmas Music Collection and Esperanza's Box of Saints just looked interesting; the songbook has EVERY old classic, music and lyrics, so that's pretty neat.
Now the Love is Hell caught me by surprise when I found it lying out among the stacks of books. How could someone have found and picked it up, but not ended up buying it? It boggled my mind until I remembered I was at a carnival where you see people wearing sweatshirts that say stuff along the lines of "Hooray for the Pope!" and suddenly I had an incredibly vivid mental imagine of just how much pearl clutching must have gone on when the kid asked mom to buy them the funny cartoon bunny book. Heh.
Moving on, we've got L.A. Confidential, another Ellroy book. I watched the movie for the first time after I read Dahlia, and thought it was great, so I'm looking forward to this. Hearts in Atlantis is a result of me realizing through my obsession with The Mist and Shawshank that I have to read every bit of non-horror Stephen King I can get my hands on. Geek Love has been recommended to me a million times, including right before I went to this book sale, so that was a no brainer. I've liked short stories/excepts from Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club) so I got The Kitchen God's Wife and have heard good things about Reading Lolita in Tehran so that rounded out the purchases.
Lastly, there's a bunch of Catholic swag I got, in a nice little warmup for Comic-Con. You got your saint's trading cards, glow in the dark rosaries, typical stuff. The loveliest bit of ephemera there was the "Voter Guide for Serious Catholics" that explains about how the Pope (the new one) has ruled that to be in a state of grace to participate Communion you have to actively fight against the evils of abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia and stem cell research. That's right, you can accept that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, you can believe that a dried out cracker is actually flesh, but if you don't want to actively fight against a person's right to marry the person they're in love with or exercise control over their own body you are not welcome in this special little club, so gethafuckout. Aaand that's why they only get my money when I'm getting cheap books out of the deal.
Or when I'm throwing dimes. I won two Winnie the Pooh plates!
I was raised Catholic, but ever since I rebel without a caused my way out of the last stages of CCD my closest affiliation with the Church has been showing up to the yearly carnival, throwing some dimes at dishes to try to win an ashtray, riding the rinky dink rides (until last year when I finally decided being motion sick all night isn't worth two minutes of exhilaration on the Zipper), and buying books at the book sale. I seem to remember they used to be a quarter a paperback and fiddy cents for hard, but like everything else the prices have gone up and nowadays they're $0.50 and $1. All the parishioners just donate all their extra books, so you get an eclectic mix of last year's hot book club books, plenty of churchy stuff and just random old stuff they pulled from their garages. My favorite thing to do is go in with an idea of one or two things I want, and then just pick up whatever else sparks my interest. To illustrate, here's the haul from 2005:
No, the Sin City book I got at Borders. I guess I thought it was important enough to document since it was the very first Sin City I bought after the movie, I've got them all now. Moving on, the first few books you see are among the churchy stuff I mentioned. The Catholic Source Book I bought in the hopes that it would be a good reference for the post-apocalyptic magical realism epic I thought I was about to write. Along those same optimistic lines, we've got the MLA Handbook and How Writers Write. The Jungle Book represents the entry from the "pick up old favorites on the cheap" category, and then we've got the noir. I've always been interested in true crime stories and the Black Dahlia in particular, so I jumped at the chance to pick up the Ellroy book. I had also just heard of this pulp author John D. MacDonald, and it was a complete shock to find, just a few weeks later, a whole buttload of books by the guy with amazingly awesome names like The Dreadful Lemon Sky and Cancel All Our Vows, that I could pick up for two bits apiece. I've never gotten around to reading them, but I like knowing they're there when I'm ready.
Here's this year:
All for six bucks. I didn't have much in mind to pick up so I asked my best buddy if he wanted anything. He asked for short stories and anything Orson Scott Card, and as always the church book sale provided, with 50 Great Short Stories (mostly old boring ones, but it has The Lottery, worth the purchase price alone), Ender's Game and one neither of us have read, Lost Boys. For myself, the only thing I had in mind was The Catcher in the Rye thanks to the recent recommendation and I found that too so I was batting 100%. The Christmas Music Collection and Esperanza's Box of Saints just looked interesting; the songbook has EVERY old classic, music and lyrics, so that's pretty neat.
Now the Love is Hell caught me by surprise when I found it lying out among the stacks of books. How could someone have found and picked it up, but not ended up buying it? It boggled my mind until I remembered I was at a carnival where you see people wearing sweatshirts that say stuff along the lines of "Hooray for the Pope!" and suddenly I had an incredibly vivid mental imagine of just how much pearl clutching must have gone on when the kid asked mom to buy them the funny cartoon bunny book. Heh.
Moving on, we've got L.A. Confidential, another Ellroy book. I watched the movie for the first time after I read Dahlia, and thought it was great, so I'm looking forward to this. Hearts in Atlantis is a result of me realizing through my obsession with The Mist and Shawshank that I have to read every bit of non-horror Stephen King I can get my hands on. Geek Love has been recommended to me a million times, including right before I went to this book sale, so that was a no brainer. I've liked short stories/excepts from Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club) so I got The Kitchen God's Wife and have heard good things about Reading Lolita in Tehran so that rounded out the purchases.
Lastly, there's a bunch of Catholic swag I got, in a nice little warmup for Comic-Con. You got your saint's trading cards, glow in the dark rosaries, typical stuff. The loveliest bit of ephemera there was the "Voter Guide for Serious Catholics" that explains about how the Pope (the new one) has ruled that to be in a state of grace to participate Communion you have to actively fight against the evils of abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia and stem cell research. That's right, you can accept that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, you can believe that a dried out cracker is actually flesh, but if you don't want to actively fight against a person's right to marry the person they're in love with or exercise control over their own body you are not welcome in this special little club, so gethafuckout. Aaand that's why they only get my money when I'm getting cheap books out of the deal.
Or when I'm throwing dimes. I won two Winnie the Pooh plates!