Bookshelf:

New Books! New CDs!

After the busy week, I decided I basically wanted to take it easy this weekend. Debbi came down and we had a quiet weekend mostly lounging around at home.

The main exception to this was that I finally schlepped a whole bunch of compact discs over to Rasputin Music and sold them for store credit, which I promptly spent. Strangely, Rasputin's credit system gives you only two months to spend it, and you have to spend the whole credit all at once. Fortunately, I had little trouble doing so. I found not only a couple of Van Halen albums I wanted, but also the two Kirsty MacColl albums I'd been missing, and some other not-quite random items. Sure is nice to buy a bunch of CDs essentially for free. I wonder if I have any other CDs I want to get rid of?

Actually, it took them about 45 minutes to process my discs, so we took the opportunity to check out a used bookstore I'd never been to before, and hadn't even known existed until we walked by it several months ago through sheer coincidence. The store is named Recycle Books, and as is usually the case with used bookstores in my area that I'd never heard of, I'd expected it to be a little hole in the wall, catering to people other than me (e.g., to "serious collectors", or to people who buy musty old tomes no one's ever heard of).

Well, it turned out to be a well-lit, well-organized store with three rooms, and a large science fiction section. I ended up picking up about ten books for myself - all in very good condition - and a couple more for my Dad! They're all paperbacks, so they didn't run me too much, but still, that's a lot of books. I'll definitely have to add it to BookBuyers and Know Knew Books as a store I frequent regularly.

One of the books I found was a copy of Edward M. Lerner's Probe. You might remember that I enjoyed two stories by Lerner I've read in Analog in the past year, so I was pretty happy to come upon this book.

Happiness and joy!

The rest of the day was mostly spent watching baseball on TV, reading, heading out to get dinner (we've recently rediscovered Boston Market), and making a run to Trader Joe's. Then today we only went out to buy some new windshield wipers for Deb's car, and otherwise sat around reading and watching football (and learning that Barry Bonds hit two more home runs today, and has 12 games left to hit 5 to break the single-season record of 70).

I also finished reading Maxine McArthur's novel Time Future, which should appeal to fans of semi-hard SF and of the TV show Babylon 5 (with which it has some very strong similarities). Read my review for more info.

A quiet weekend was just what I wanted, as it turns out.

One thing that is bugging me about the ongoing reaction to the terrorist attacks is the heavier introduction of god into our society, in little subtle ways. As with Ceej, I find the singing of "God Bless America" to be a little nauseating (partly because it's got such a saccharine melody!), and although I've enjoyed "America the Beautiful" in the past, it, too, has a reference to god ("God shed his grace on thee"). Although I've never been a big fan of "The Star Spangled Banner" either (especially when it's butchered by some pop or gospel diva who doesn't realize that the song is a march, not a ballad), I'm coming to appreciate its good non-religious lyrics with a specific point to them, and I do rather like it when performed by a proper brass band as a march.

If we go into some sort of full-scale war, I wonder if we'll start trotting out "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"? ("Glory, glory hallelujah!" Nah.) Better we bring back Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" (which he apparently wrote in response to "God Bless America", although the original lyric also referred to god).

Anyway, one of today's football games (well, only one that I noticed) began with a player leading the crowd in prayer, which made me say to Debbi, "Thank god I'm a baseball fan, not a football fan."

The irony of my exact words caught up to me about 30 seconds later.