Wordflood

So there I was last Saturday morning. I had spent the night at a friend's house and woke up around the unholy hour of 9am to the sound of his girlfriend's cell phone alarm going off every five minutes. I hadn't had enough beer the night prior to get really ornery about it, but getting up that early with the sun that bright in my eyes wasn't one of my goals for the day. After blowing two hours at a few halfhearted games of solitaire, I decided I should just go home and do something productive. Something that I could point to and say, "Look! I did something useful before getting hammered all over again half a day later."

Distressingly, cleaning Reeses's litter box, taking care of his food and water dish, tidying up my computer desk area, looking for a lost ganja tin, taking a shower, and eating lunch didn't qualify. I needed something more.

So I went to the Half Price Books off Research Boulevard with said friend. I intended on going though their used CD section and picking out a few things and perhaps poking through their political and historical books for any goodies. My plan was instantly derailed when I saw the super discounted racks outside the front door on the sidewalk. Nearly everything was marked at a single dollar. O, heavens.

In short order, I picked up

• At Dawn We Slept - The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor by Gordon W. Prange (1981), paperback
  
• The Future of Peace - On the Front Lines with the World's Great Peacemakers by Scott Hunt (2002), paperback
  
• Reform and Revolution in China - The 1911 Revolution in Hunan and Hubei by Joseph W. Esherick (1976), paperback
  
• Hirohito - Emperor Of Japan by Leonard Mosley (1966), hardcover
  
• Dragon Wing, Fire Sea, and The Hand of Chaos (volumes 1, 3, and 5 of the Death Gate Cycle series) all by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, all hardcover
  
• The Tibetan Book of the Dead edited by Dr. Walter Y. Evans-Wentz (later edition with Dr. Jung's commentary)

The final book I picked up was only $4 and the title just screamed out to be bought: Laissez Faire and the General-Welfare State - A Study of Conflict in American Thought, 1865-1901 by Sindey Fine (1964) in paperback.

That's $12 for at least three thousand pages of reading material. I also picked up three Rurouni Kenshin DVDs at $13 each to keep my collection of the Kyoto Arc going. In addition, I finally addressed a gaping hole in my music collection: The Best of the Doors 2CD set was mine for $14.

This should be some very enlightening literature. My knowledge of near-modern Chinese and Japanese history is thin. I intend to start with At Dawn..., move on to Hirohito..., and proceed to Reform and Revolution....

Of course, this will make finishing Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago perilous. I've juggled Big Important Books before, but these two are reputably in classes of their own. Other works yet to be completed and in various stages of bookmarkedness:

• George Reisman's Capitalism - A complete and integrated understanding of the nature and value of human economic life
  
• Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand
  
• John Stuart Mill's On Liberty

Lucky for me, fall and winter are my two most favorite times of the year to read. Just cracking the new items in my collection and inhaling the musty oldness makes me want to pour a pint and find a quiet place with a good chair.

Posted by Drizzten at November 08, 2004 02:39 PM