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I bought more books and you are not allowed to hit me

The summer solstice is past! Summer continues, but begins to fade, and we press on, wending our weary way toward ever shorter days and the inevitable dreariness of winter and its dark dark darkness.

...I went to a book sale! Twice.


I know. I KNOW, OKAY? But I donated books BOTH TIMES I WENT. Because it was Open Books. And they are the best bookstore in Chicago and operate as a not-for-profit and all their books are donated so they are sold CHEAPLY and this was their annual half-price sale and I CAN'T NOT GO TO THAT.

These are the books from the second trip, as I was more restrained and bought little ones:


Yeah. So. The best edition of The Horse and His Boy (which I have read precisely once in my lifetime); What Now? by Ann Patchett, which is really only worth buying if you can get it for a dollar, because it takes half an hour to read; Are Women Human? by Dorothy L. Sayers, which I pretty much got because 1) hard to find, and 2) 75 cents; and then the second and third Amelia Peabody books because they didn't have the first one, and OKAY YOU GUYS. 

Two of you have suggested I would like these books. I started the second in the series while in a pretty ready mood to like it, and she immediately is like "Oh, so I'm married to this guy and we're exciting archaeologists, and I had a baby and then we left him at home and went to Egypt, which is ALSO exciting, and then we came home and the baby's all right I guess, but I super-want to go back to Egypt so ugh, this baby" and I AM NOT LIKING THIS. 

It was written in the '80s, which was very "What? You shouldn't have to stay at home and raise your kid -- you're a smart and talented woman and why should that go into raising the next generation" and this is a super-prickly subject and I have a very specifically-tied-to-it background (book my mother co-wrote) but if you're not even acting like you want to be AROUND your kid because you'd rather be off digging things up, this is an awful introduction to you. And I get that it's the second book. But even so. She better reveal other, delightful parts of her personality pretty damn quick.

So the FIRST time I went on Saturday, I got these:


Love Story
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Good Soldier
At Swim-Two-Birds
Seattle 2010
The Hippopotamus

Love Story was a pop culture phenomenon, okay? And SOMEtimes it's important to read those. Not when it's some piece of sex-purposed garbage like 50 Shades, but if it causes enough references in OTHER pieces of pop culture and everyone knows about it, then sure. Like, I KNOW about Love Story because of things like there being a "Love means never having to say you're sorry" joke in the 1972 Barbra Streisand film What's Up, Doc? (which you should see). So they had a 1970s copy in paperback for like a dollar and I grabbed it.

Someone just told me to read One Hundred Years, and all right. Fine. I haven't read any Marquez and I GUESS I should change that. Or at least try. I suspect he will not be my cup of tea. BUT THEN there's The Good Soldier, which I've been trying to read for years, but always as an eBook, and I don't think I can read it as an eBook, so I finally just bought a copy.

At Swim-Two-Birds is a classic and apparently really weird, but one of my brothers likes it (albeit the one who likes weird things), so I am Making an Effort. The Seattle guide is OBVS because I'm going to Seattle next month and need a guidebook to get all planny. Mmmm plans.

And then The Hippopotamus, which I've been meaning to read for forever, and I laughed out loud on the first page and therefore considered it worth buying. Good job, Stephen Fry.

I did not include the books I bought as presents for people, but there are...maybe four of them? At least one is for someone I'm not really speaking to at the moment, but if I see a book I think you would like, this conquers all possible Issues we might currently have (but will go back to having after the book has been given). This reached the point of me asking my friend Katie:

me: "Can I buy this book for [ex I had a really nasty breakup with and was then hung up on for a year and should probably just never talk to again]?"
Katie: "Is that a real question?"

So! More books. I have them. But I got through some of my adorable copy of Vindication of the Rights of Woman and mainly wrote notes like "She's so sassy here" in it, which she IS:

But, alas! husbands, as well as their helpmates, are often only overgrown children; nay, thanks to early debauchery, scarcely men in their outward form—and if the blind lead the blind, one need not come from heaven to tell us the consequence.

So I'm reading things I own. I will finish things by the end of June. Yes. That will happen. 

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