Saturday was a good day at the Friends bookstore. I picked up three books, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", "Say Nothing" and "Goren's New Bridge Complete", for five dollars. Two dollars each for the hardbacks and one dollar for the paperback.
I can't remember the last time I paid anything close to full price for a hard-copy book. Most of what I buy either comes from our local library bookstore (The Friends bookstore at Forsyth County (GA) public library), or thrift stores like Goodwill. That's offset by the pretty big collection I have on my Kindle that I mostly pay full price for on Amazon.
Here's a brief description and reason for each of the books I picked up on Saturday:
- "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I've mentioned before that I started reading "The Brother's Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky about six months ago. I'm about 60% in (thank you, Kindle) and I'm into it. It's a good story with some deep questions throughout. So I decided to try some more contemporary Russian literature. This is the story of one day in the life of man in a Russian prison in Siberia. It's even more relevant given the death last weekend of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny in a prison in Siberia. Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970.
- "Say Nothing" by Patrick Radden Keefe. A story of The Troubles in Northern Ireland woven through the kidnapping and murder of a mother of 10 from her apartment in Belfast. I read the audiobook last year. I love to pick up hard copies of audiobooks I like and this was a great find since it's a first edition in pretty good shape.
- "Goren's New Bridge Complete" by Charles Goren. Jenny and I started playing bridge with another couple about two years ago. I thought this might give us an edge, but unfortunately we lost on Sunday night. I might ask for my money back.
The fourth book is the one I'm reading now: "G-Man. J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century" by Beverly Gage. This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2023. I'm listening to the audiobook, about five hours in. A couple of standouts so far:
- Organizing data was one of the keys to Hoover's early success. He used hundreds of thousands of index cards to reference and cross-reference all the FBI files.
- Another key was Hoover's connections to his Kappa Alpha fraternity brothers, especially early in his career in the Department of Justice. I had some awareness of KA's history from college days at the University of Georgia, but did not know much about the overtly racist founding and founders and the fact that many of the Old South "traditions" carried on well past my college days in the late 80's-early 90's.
I'll be on the lookout for a nice first edition of this one too. Preferably for two dollars.
Disease leader who is passionate about using data, technology & learning innovation to create a-ha moments in fighting disease, giving patients a high-quality experience and achieving best-in-class outcomes.
9 个月Interesting! I like Patrick Keefe. The Snakehead was such a fascinating read.
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9 个月Bill, I read "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" prior to the Soviet Union falling apart. It was timely then, and, unfortunately, it's quite timely now.
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9 个月Looks like some great finds, Bill! And at a great price!