If you never browse the used book racks at this excellent library, you’re missing out on high quality, discount summer reading. Here’s just some of what I noticed a few days ago:
The humor of Augusten Burroughs, the macho side of Elmore Leonard, a Faulkner classic, and a novel from a series that was made into movies where Sean Bean *doesn’t* die!
Margaret Atwood is very popular right now, so this duo will likely go quickly.
Another duo, this one from Fitzgerald
And such variety! Here we see great looking copies of contemporary classic Bel Canto, the legendary One Hundred Years of Solitude, some stories of Fitzgerald, Crime and Punishment, and if you’re looking for recent genre fun, some of F. Paul Wilson’s Repairman Jack stories.
Plenty more quality here! What do we see? Out front, it’s already hard to miss three classics: Madame Bovary, The Two Towers, and a comic masterpiece by Oscar Wilde. Behind those: the excellent memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran, next to an older classic by Cormac McCarthy, a couple of titles away from McEwan’s magnum opus Atonement, a few more titles away from the first “Ladies Detective Agency” novel. Speaking of comedy, I just noticed in this picture that the row under these appears to have a book by Al Roker in it.
I haven’t seen this edition since I was a kid in the 80’s!
Two more classics out front here: Jane Eyre and another copy of Crime and Punishment. Perhaps a college student unloaded this last semester’s required reading here recently? Huck Finn is in the background, as is Emily Dickinson, some heavy meat by Sartre, and something (?) by Chuck Palahniuk. On either end we see some fun pop fiction–Clive Cussler and F. Paul Wilson. There are several hard covers and paperbacks from each of those on sale at Aliante right now–great beach reading!
You’ve probably wanted to read James Clavell’s Asian Saga in Dutch at some point, so now’s your chance.
Both sides of this cart are full of political titles from both sides of the aisle–I thought it was funny seeing the current and last president so close together here.
I didn’t even know that Michener had written a memoir! Now THIS would be some great summer reading.
Ah, the glories of the library’s paperback spinners. Where else will you find the increasingly overlooked work of Alan Dean Foster, right next to a copy of Dracula?
Five truly great purveyors of pulp fiction right here!
I love how such a major classic as Origin of Species sits next to some random weird stuff (although “Stories of Famous Operas” actually sounds pretty good to me) until we get to Watership Down.
Speaking of variety! A genre experiment by Elmore Leonard sits next to another genre work, the classic I Am Legend (sadly, with a movie cover), right over literary classics Babbitt (fiction) and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (non-fiction, from the recently and dearly departed Tom Wolfe…ave atque vale!), and those next to a copy of Thomas Harris’s famous Silence of the Lambs sequel (sadly, with a movie cover).
Seriously, where else but used book shelves can you even find real copies of sci-fi and pulp horror schlock like this any more? Stephen King has cited the now largely forgotten Ring Around the Sun as an influence on his own speculative work.
Four scary classics! (I think The Awakening is overrated, partly because I was forced to read it in THREE different classes in college.)
Ahhh! The Rule of Four is one of my very favorite books! If you haven’t read it, please do! It’s smart and fun and ten times better than The Da Vinci Code, to which it’s often compared.
Orson Scott Card chooses the genre’s greatest hits, and the results are spectacular!
Gently Hew Stone 