I got back to the
Montclair Book Center yesterday, during a busy day of errands and frivolity (The Wife and I were celebrating our 19th wedding anniversary -- the actual day is the 22nd -- by offloading our two sons and having some time alone), because they had another special order for me.
While I was there, I had to get other books, because that's what a bookstore is
for.
So, I grabbed two fantasy novels for Thing 2 -- Terry Pratchett's
The Wee Free Men
and Rick Riordan's
The Lost Hero
, to give him choices for his next series. (If I haven't mentioned lately how wonderful it is that I have a son who really enjoys reading fantasy books and telling me about them, let me mention it: it's wonderful.)
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The special order was Richard Stark's
The Black Ice Score
, getting me that much closer to starting a reading project of that entire series.
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And then I found some books I used to have (before the flood) and needed to own again:
- Calvin Trillin's The Tummy Trilogy
, collecting his first three books (mostly written in the '70s) about eating in America, which are vital for anyone who likes eating, America, and wonderfully funny, engaging writing. - Evan Dorkin's Dork, Vol. 1: Who's Laughing Now?
, an excellent collection from a grumpy and feeding-hand-biting cartoonist, one of my favorite creators from the '90s (and since then, when he has new work out). - And David Boswell's Reid Fleming: Worlds Toughest Milkman, Vol. I
, which I reviewed here a couple of years ago, and which I buy again in hopes that it will help, in the tiniest way, spur Boswell to finishing up the stories for Vol. II.
On the same set of errands, I also stopped in a comics/games shop -- actually, to buy plastic trading-card sleeves (the 9-to-a-page kind, three-hole punched to fit into a ring binder), since The Wife uses those to organize coupons -- and happened across two more books.
Snarked!, Vol. 1: Forks and Hope
is the first collection of Roger Langridge's new all-ages comics series from Boom!, and I've been on a Langridge kick the last couple of years. (Driven by his great
Muppet Show comics; see
my review of
Family Reunion for more details.)
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And Chester Brown's
The Little Man
, since I keep thinking I should dip into Brown's work, and I really don't want to spend much time on his newest, why-I-only-sleep-with-whores book.