Atta Boyd!
This is great. I've been rereading the Constitution recently - a handy pocket version published, ironically enough, by the Boy Scouts of America. Also ironic is that the crucial inch of breathing room between church & state is here being kept wedged open by a pastor. An evangelical pastor. I'd send his church some money if I had any to spare.
My library is growing
Isaac Asimov, The Complete RobotJohn Berryman, Homage to Mistress Bradstreet & Other PoemsElizabeth Bishop, Complete ProseMartin Buber, I and ThouGeorge Eliot, MiddlemarchWilliam Golding, Lord of the FliesSpaulding Gray, Impossible VacationLorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the SunJoseph Heller, Catch-22 (a nice hardcover version)Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of KilimanjaroJames Joyce, UlyssesMaxine Kumin, NurtureJonathan Lethem, Motherless BrooklynBernard Malamud, Magic BarrelBernard Malamud, A New LifeGuy de Maupassant, The Great Short StoriesIan McEwan, AtonementIan McEwan, SaturdayThomas Merton, Complete PoemsGeorge Orwell, Animal FarmPeter Pereira, Saying the WorldAlexander Pope, Complete PoemsPhilip Roth, Goodbye ColumbusAleksandr Solsyneitzen, The Gulag ArchipelagoMark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (a New York Post Family Edition hardcover)Mark Twain, Complete Humorous Sketches and TalesWalt Whitman, Leaves of GrassTom Wolfe, I Am Charlotte Simmons*
So, ahem, yes. These books account for a large part of my absence from the internets. I picked these up at either 1) the Skaneateles Memorial Library sale, where, at the stroke of the church's 6'o'clock, the gathered bibliophiles darted under the pink tape barrier and had at the beautiful, organized, and extensive collection; 2) the Hamilton Grange branch of the New York Public Library, where I found six books including the new Tom Wolfe in hardcover for $3.50; 3) the Book Cellar in Solvay, New York, which proffers vast rooms full of massmarket books with pink covers and bodices rent in twain, and smaller rooms toward the back with Malamud and Philip Roth; 4) Westsider Books in Manhattan, Broadway & 80th St., where the proprietor knows his Tom Waits.
