Book Score

My mother sent me a Father’s Day gift of $25 the other day. What do I do with such monetary munerations? Go to Home Depot? Goodyear Tire and Auto Supply? Catch a ball game?

Nah. I’m not that kind of a Dad. I go to the bookstore.

I went this afternoon with half-a-mind to buy J.E.A. Tyler’s massive and overhauled The Complete Tolkien Companion. Because, wait for it, I think I may re-read the trilogy again, barely eighteen months after finishing a second, well-traveled read. Now, it’s big and brand-spanking new, so I can’t buy it in good faith since we have so much debt. Normally. But since I got this gift from Mom, I figured I could splurge on Tyler’s book as a companion for my re-read.

But they didn’t have it in stock! Argh. And it seems they won’t until October 2, 2012. Double argh.

So I wandered about the store looking for something to jump out at me. And it did. Four somethings.

I stumbled across the $1 book bin, and it was recently restocked with something like two or three hundred paperbacks. Excellent. Within ten minutes I selected my four, and when I left the store, my net worth was $3.60 lighter.

What did I get?

Interestingly, three which were quickly turned into movies …

A Bridge Too Far, by Cornelius Ryan – my favorite war movie as a kid (due to it being played nonstop on HBO).

Magic, by William Goldman – that creepy 70s slasher flick about the ventriloquist (Anthony Hopkins) and his psychotic dummy (Corky) that creeped me out nonstop as a kid.

Seven Days in May, by Charles W. Bailey II – saw this on TCM only once about a dozen or so years ago. Worth a read, I would think.

And the fourth book I actually thought about buying as I was walking in the door to the store, and then I go find it in the used book bargain bin – Go figure!!!

It’s actually Weaveworld, by Clive Barker, and this weirdly fantastical supernatural book completely enveloped me during the winter of 1988. I wanna see if it still packs a similar punch.

So now my backlog is about sixty books. So many books, so little time!