Bookstore Bound!

I have really enjoyed my last two trips to the bookstore, in which I could walk out with big purchases. It feels so good (background music: Chuck Mangione) after the months of counting every penny. (Maybe I should say every 10-won piece. It's the Korean equivalent of a penny.)

When I made my bookstore pilgrimmage in March, I wasn't personally greedy at all. Hard to believe. Totally out of character! Everything I purchased was somehow related to being an English teacher -- even the Garfield book of cartoons. Oh wait. I forgot SURVIVAL KOREAN. But that's for study, not for fun.

When I went there in April (yes, I'm trying to hold myself down to ONCE a paycheck, but *how long* do you REALLY think THAT'S gonna last? Huh? Huh?) I didn't buy anything teaching-related, and instead, selfishly indulged myself. I bought 3 books for nothing but my own reading enjoyment.

I was going to buy 4 books: One from fiction, one from non-fiction, one from the children's section, and one from the classics section, but I couldn't decide between 2 classics.

Here are my purchases:

BLUE DIARY (novel) by Alice Hoffman. I was torn between two other modern fiction novels -- THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE (forgot the author's name, sorry) and THE DIVE FROM CLAUSEN'S PIER by Ann Packer. The way I made my decision is that I checked the prices on all 3 books. They were all within a buck of each other, with BLUE DIARY being the least expensive.

For non-fiction, I looked for THE GEOGRAPHY OF THOUGHT (another book I had in my hands a couple of months ago, but let slip away -- someone else bought it! Damn!) Oh, well. I happily settled on Bill Bryson's NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND.

In the classics section, I struggled between Nella Larsen's 2 novels, PASSING and QUICKSAND. It was just too damn difficult; I almost ended up buying both books, so I regretfully left them both there. I hope I won't be sorry when I'm finally ready to buy!

In the children's section, I went for THE GREAT BRAIN, by John D. Fitzgerald, which is obviously a modern classic from my own childhood. (The copyright is 1969, the year I was 7 and then 8). I truly don't remember this book. I'm puzzled it eluded me or I eluded it for about 35 years. Well, that's over. I intend to read it. The premise (10 year old boy in late 19th century Utah, based on the author's brother, who's able to outthink most of the kids and a few of the adults around him) looks fun, and the illustrations by Mercer Mayer make me smile.