Quintet

There are three fairly decent used book stores out where my parents live in north-eastern Pennsylvania. Since it’s a 90-minute, 75-mile drive out there, we only visit a half-dozen or so times a year. Usually Father’s Day, Thanksgiving, and a handful of other times. So whenever we’re out there I like to hit one of the used book stores. For Father’s Day I hit the one in Milford.

Lately I’m kinda sci-fi’d out. With the thirteen PJF books I read this year plus Neal Stepheson’s mammothian Anathem (which I’m close to completing), I’m looking for a genre change. Two summers ago I read a coupla Zane Grey westerns; last summer I read a couple Cornelius Ryan WW2 books. Since I’m desiring fiction, I decided to go with the westerns for a while.

So that’s the mindset I went into the store with.

Here’s what I came out with:



Childhood’s End (1953), by Arthur C. Clarke. OK! OK! I just violated all that I said before by buying this classic SF tale. Truth be told, I never read it. Plus the book was in great condition. So I picked it up, knowing it would probably sit on the shelves behind me for a couple of year before I got to it.

Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (1978), Alan Dean Foster. OK, the last SF. This one I’ve seen a million times over the course of my life and have never read it. From what I understand, the storyline here was supposed to be filmed as the sequel to Star Wars until The Empire Strikes Back actually was. So it might make for an interesting couple of days read, hearkening back to my childhood. (I read large amounts of the Star Wars original novelization waiting at the DMV with my grandfather on 1970s summer.)

The Streak (1937), by Max Brand. Brand is one of the pioneers of the classic Western tale, having written over 300 of them in his super-prolific career. He also volunteered – in his fifties – to be a front-line war correspondent in WW2 and was tragically killed by shrapnel. The bookstore had about a dozen of his books on the shelf; this looked to be the most interesting: young man fancies himself to become a gunslinger … then a real gunslinger comes a-callin’.

The Wolf is My Brother (1967), by Chad Oliver. Hey – I read a book by this guy two summers ago – but it was a science fiction novel! (See here for the review.) That has to be an odd combination, no? Anyway, I enjoyed the SF novel of his, so I’m interested in seeing how Oliver fares out in the west. Post-Civil War. Indian War, to be exact.

The Gates of the Mountains (1963), by Will Henry. This’ll either be incredibly eye-opening or incredibly dull. The novel uses the Lewis & Clark Expedition as a backdrop for one scout’s search for his missing father at the hands of the Shoshone. For years I had Undaunted Courage on my shelf – unread – despite being fascinated watching an hour-long special on the expedition. Maybe this book will inspire me to read the history. We’ll see.

So … once I finish Anathem this week, I’m moving on to one of these …