I have just returned from my old haunt, Lexington, Kentucky. (How I miss living in a city in which I know where everything is!) It was a nice mini-vacation. The drive up on Thursday evening took longer than expected due to some horrific rain, occasional closures on I-75, and the meth-addled truck drivers roaring past at 97mph and sheeting me with water in already near-non-visibility conditions. *grump, grump* Once I got there, though, it was lovely. I met a friend, we spent the weekend on mini-shopping excursions, and I got to pop in to see my beloved tattoo artist (Charlotta of Tattoo Charlie's), though I didn't get any work done. I'll have to go back in July sometime for that.
Anyway, despite crappy weather, I got to see my good friend and catch up with her and her man, and I also got to see my other best friend on the planet, and her lovely husband.
On one of the shopping excursions, I acquired a Batgirl bobblehead doll, which will fit perfectly with my random office decor. (Everyone knows Batgirl was a librarian for her dayjob. (As a librarian, I aspire to have a nightlife in which I wear purple sparkly spandex and whoop badguy ass while wearing high heeled boots. To date, this has not happened.) We also hit a comic/horror convention that was in town. It was pretty pitiful size-wise, but I did manage to purchase pirated DVDs of the tv show Birds of Prey, which is about the daughter of Batman and Catwoman and her merry misfit band of goth/punk superheroes. It actually wasn't as bad as it sounds. I also picked up the tv series Brimstone, which I have never seen, but looks interesting. Plus, John Glover plays the devil. I'm looking forward to finding the time to watch that.
We hit the UK fan outlet, where sweatshirts for $5 wooed me, and I got a camo hat with "University of Kentucky" embroidered on it in pink.
The real win, though, was going to Half Price Books over in Hamburg. Lordy me, do I love that store. It's one of those massive used books (and DVDs, and LPs, etc) stores that will buy your stuff and then slashes prices pretty well, so it makes a nice alternative to the ridiculously expensive Barnes & Noble. I picked up:
Betting on the Muse by Bukowski
War All the Time by Bukowski
Rules for the Dance by Mary Oliver
A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Selected Poems by Falck
The Captain's Verses by Pablo Neruda
The Book of Love by Rumi
What Work Is by Phillip Levine
Imperfect Thirst by Galway Kinnell
Leaves of Grass by Whitman
To Make a Prairie by Maxine Kumin
William Carlos Williams: Selected poems by Tomlinson
The Sleeping Beauty by Hayden Carruth
Outside History by Eavan Boland
Poems New and Selected by James Laughlin
New Selected Poems by Philip Levine
Poetry and the World by Robert Pinsky
Claiming the Spirit Within: A Sourcebook of Women's Poetry Edited by Marilyn Sewell
Including tax, this list set me back $93.59. That's right. Oodles and oodles of poetry that I haven't read yet, by authors that sounded either vaguely or very familiar, for less than a hundred bucks. I would like to report that I am, indeed, the winner. Nevermind that I didn't really *have* that money to spend. I will likely take it out of my grocery budget to pay that credit card bill when it comes in. It was totally worth it, since I likely have a good chunk of my bibliography for my next MFA semester.
Mmm, books. Delicious. It's just as well I don't have one of those stores locally, I suppose - I'm running out of places to put my bookses...
No comments:
Post a Comment