Books 4/16/05
After a bit of concern that Santa Clara doesn’t have any bookstores (none came up online and I don’t have a physical phonebook), we discovered a Borders not too far down the freeway, and then two marvelous bookstores in lovely downtown Mountain View, which we visited today. The fabulous part of all of it is that I have 7 new books, 5 of which were on sale! Woohoo!
Because you care, my purchases were:
From Borders: To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust, and Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, neither of which were on sale, but they weren’t overly expensive. Other books tried to come home with me, and pled their cases well, but I resisted.
From Books Inc.: For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway ($4.98), and The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo by Paula Huntley ($5.98). They look to be a good combo.
From Bookbuyers:Luna and Nana by Delacorta ($2.00 each) since my copies are getting pretty worn; and Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Conner ($7.95). They also had a copy of Portrait of a Marriage:Vita Sackville West and Harold Nicholson by Nigel Nicholson, which I really want, but their shelves are incredibly tall and I am not, and there were no sales people around with step stools or large book-getting-hooks. I’ll have to get it on another trip, along with a book about Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald that I can’t find now that I’m looking for it on Amazon- it better still be at the store when I go back! Oh no!
It’s good to have new books. I’ve been slacking on my reading, ever since we moved and I got Animal Crossing, which is the best video game ever. It’s very distracting. And without two 45 minute trolley rides a day, I don’t have a focused time for reading. That needs to change.
Now some of you may be thinking, “Didn’t you just get rid of a bunch of books for your move? And now you’re replenshing? Did you learn nothing? Those books will have to be moved when you move! Think of the movers!” To you, I explain my newly conceived book tax. Well, I didn’t conceive it, someone else came up with it, but I gladly stole it from them for my own use. For every book that comes into the house, $1 gets put aside (I haven’t figured out where yet) to pay for the movers that will eventually move it. I think it’s an excellent idea, and one which I will attempt to keep up on. We’ll see.