Last Friday, I drove across a bridge to a library on the other side of the city for a Friends of the Library sale. I was hoping for a nice leisurely afternoon browse, figured I'd find a few titles worth my efforts, and I'd fill out the 10 dollar brown paper grocery bag with books I could trade for store credit elsewhere. I ended up filling the bag almost immediately, mostly with heavy hardbacks, resulting in my weak arm quickly settling into a painful fatigue that killed my browsing vibe.
Here are the books I picked up:
--A paperback copy of Thomas S. Klise's cult classic The Last Western. It was in the "nonfiction" section, which I didn't really browse that studiously, but its cover nevertheless stood out to me. I bought a copy of it from an online used bookseller online six years ago (and was very disappointed that the seller had appended a retail barcode sticker to its cover).
--A paperback omnibus of Salem Kirban's early seventies "prophecy" apocalypse novels 666 and its sequel 1000. I'd thumbed through a worn copy of 666 sometime last year---the title of and its cracked spine calling to me from the shelf of the sci-fi section. Kirban's "novel" is a millennialist screed conveyed in a tawdry postmodern manner, and it didn't seem worth the eight bucks the used bookstore was asking at the time---but I didn't mind snuggling it into the paper bag last Friday, oddity that it is.
--A hardback copy of Don DeLillo's novel Zero K. I skipped it when it came out, and I don't think DeLillo's done anything good since Point Omega.
--A hardback copy of John Barth's novel Every Third Thought. I think that Barth's best work is decades behind him, but every now and then I try something newer, and this 2011 novel is one of his shorter recentish efforts.
--A hardback copy of Leni Zumas' novel Red Clocks. I had never heard of this book, but the spine enticed me enough to pick it up when I was browsing the "sci fi" section at the booksale, and the premise--America has outlawed and criminalized abortion--seemed depressingly dystopian enough to take it with me.
--A hardback copy of Sven Birkert's collection of literary criticism, An Artificial Wilderness. Includes chapters on Thomas Bernhard, Umberto Eco, Borges, and "The School of Gordon Lish" among many, many others.
--A Vintage Contemporaries Edition of Raymond Carver's Where I'm Calling From, a collection I have not read in over two decades.
--A hardback copy of Jesse Ball's novel How to Set a Fire and Why. I liked his 2011 novel The Curfew, so maybe I'll like this?
--A hardback copy of Jeanette Winterson's novel Frankisstein; reviews of this 2019 novel intrigued me at the time it was published (and I do like a good Frankenstein riff).
--A hardback copy of Robert Coover's novel Huck Out West. An amazing sequel to Twain's novel; I reviewed it on this site years ago. This handsome edition shall replace the ugly advance copy I got years ago. I might need to revisit it in anticipation of Percival Everett's take on Twain's Huck's Jim---James.
--A hardback copy of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's late novel Little Boy, which The Guardian described as a "novel-cum-memoir-cum-grand finale." (Too much cum, The Guardian.)
--A Library of America edition of The Complete Novels of Eudora Welty. I hate to admit what I will now admit: I love love love Welty's short stories, but have never read one of her novels.
--A hardback copy of Walker Percy's Thanatos Syndrome. Again, a late-period work by old master, likely not his finest stuff, but hey. I burned through his first four novels a few years ago---Lancelot was my favorite.
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