OK, we’ve established in the past that I live for the quarterly used book sale at the Orchard Park library. (See here and here for representative posts.) My methodology is usually to pick out some stuff for The Daughter first, and then look around for stuff for myself and for The Wife. Sometimes the SF pickings are good (here’s the previous best SF haul), sometimes the pickings are better for stocking the shelves with classic literature. But this time? Wow.
It seems that someone donated an entire collection of old SF paperbacks for the sale. I spotted a couple of Andre Norton titles, and then some Larry Niven, and then more and more and more, quite a bit of which I grabbed indiscriminately. As you can see, I came home with the largest haul I’ve ever brought home from the book sale, and that big chunk of SF goodness represents less than a fifth of what was there along that vein.
You’ll also notice, if you click through to the larger version, two non-SF volumes. For some reason I can’t pass up a complete Shakespeare; this edition of the Riverside Shakespeare looked nifty indeed. And I couldn’t pass up a hardcover edition of Richard Bach’s The Bridge Across Forever, a book which meant a great deal to me many years ago but which has slipped away from me more recently. (I have a post in mind to write about this, but I’ve been stalling on it because it involves some pretty personal stuff. I’ll probably work up the guts one of these days and have it turn out to be no big deal, as is usually the case.)
But really, look at all that SF goodness! Zap! Pow!!!
Ooooo!!!
Hey, that’s the edition of The Riverside Shakespeare I used in college! I’ve still got my copy somewhere around the house… if nothing else, it looks great on the shelf, with that lovely Renaissance art on the spine.
RIVERSIDE SHAKESPEARE!!!!
Scoooooooooooore!
At one point, I adored Richard Bach too. I think it was a college infatuation, much like all college kids get an infatuation with Pirsig, or Kant or Heidegger (forgive the misspelling, if you please) until they realize that they have to go to work and show up on time in order to do inconvenient things like eating and such.