Splurging with my birthday money, at the Used Book Superstore
When I opened my birthday present, aside from the gift itself, out fell two twenties and a ten. And the first thing I thought was, Now I can buy more groceries.
As you know, sometimes the life of a writer sucks. But I do have a summer software contract lined up, which should fund this year’s big book giveaway. As we say: I’m just writing to make money until my software-development career takes off.
Nonetheless, I did manage to stop by the Used Book Superstore yesterday, on a lark. I told myself I’d only check for Holly Lisle titles that I didn’t have. Didn’t find any. (No surprise.) And then I happened through the foreign-language section and the advertising-and-marketing section and the religion section.
And in this last, I saw a couple of shelves of books on Judaism. And I couldn’t resist investigating further. On these shelves I found two books of memoirs that looked particularly interesting. And so I figured, I have $50… I’ll just spend a few here…
And on the next shelf over, under “General Religion,” I found a popular archeological book on the discovery of the limestone burial box of “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” According to the inside flap, this discovery reveals “how Jesus was raised in a large, religiously conservative Jewish family … [and] how Jesus’ brother James went on to head the Jewish Christian movement in Jerusalem…”
So… I did manage to spend at least some of my birthday money on something besides groceries.
First, however, I’m still finishing up Holly Lisle’s Midnight Rain. And I’ve really wanted to get into Rabbi Dr. Mark Kinzer‘s latest, Israel’s Messiah and the People of God: A Vision for Messianic Jewish Covenant Fidelity, which I already know will inspire a deep novel—and that’s another story—but which will also require more than a few surface brain cells.
As always, my problem in choosing a book to read is that I don’t know where to begin.
And since we’re talking about the Used Book Superstore, let me leave you with this unintentionally funny photo, from the location in Burlington, MA:
Ironic labeling at the Used Book Superstore
-TimK