SOMEBODY STOP ME

I should never, ever, ever go to library book sales.

My apartment already resembles a somewhat-shabby used bookshop, albeit one with a kitchen, a sort-of pantry and a usually-clear path to the

bathroom. I actually have bookshelves on top of bookshelves since I can't expand horizontally anymore.

And yet, I can't pass these things up. Because I just know that the one I skip will be the one where the complete works of G.K. Chesterton are going for a quarter apiece, or there's an Alpha Band or Daniel Amos among the out-of-print LPs. Or they'll have 18 years of consecutive issues of Analog You get the picture.

Anyway, here's today's haul from the Macedon Public Library sale, total $10.

HARDCOVER

* The Cat Who Killed Lillian Jackson Braun by Robert Kaplow. Appears to be a wicked parody of Braun's The Cat Who books with the laid-back millionaire columnist in upstate something with the somewhat psychic crime-solving Siamese cats -- ridiculously formulaic stuff, but a guilty pleasure.
* Midsummer Century by James Blish. Read my first Blish a couple years ago (A Case of Conscience) and was quite impressed.
* A World Out of Time by Larry Niven.

SOFTCOVER
* The Worlds of A.E. Van Vogt -- anthology of 15 Van Vogt stories covering every stage of his career. A 1974 edition with requisite funky cover, sadly uncredited.
* "The Religion of President Carter" by Niels C. Nielsen Jr. I collect presidential biography, commentary and ephemera (that's how I end up writing weird stuff like "Casa Blanca"). According to the cover, Nielsen wrote a similar volume about Solzhenitsyn.
* Dreamcatcher by Stephen King. Just 'cause.
* Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon. Historical novel centering on the surveyors who divided north from south. Looked interesting.
* The Thirteen Bracelets by Robert Lory. Science fiction I've never heard of. Also 1974, also funky cover.

PERIODICALS
* The October 1973 issue of Thrilling Science Fiction.; I'd never even heard of that one.
Includes "Doomsday Army" by Jack Sharkey, with works by Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, Rosel George Brown, Gordon Dickson, E.K. Jarvis and Steven S. Gray.

VIDEOS
* The Fog -- the original, thank you, with Adrienne Barbeau and Jamie Lee Curtis. Never seen it before, but I've become interested on giving it a try ever since mrgoodwraith wrote "Elizabeth Dane."
* That's Entertainment -- Never, ever seen it. Though I've probably seen most of the clips therein.
* Star Wrek Zone: The Unauthorized Parody -- appears to be a bizarre animated Trek parody bringing the two crews of the, uh, "Rent-a-prize" together. Yowzah. Never heard of this one. This was a must-buy the moment I espied it.

NO -- ZOD.

OK, because all the Kuwl Kidz -- and everyone else, for that matter -- are doing it, I'll give the Wikipedia birthday meme a whirl.

On July 23:

EVENTS
1829: In the United States, William Austin Burt patents the first typewriter.
1962: Telstar relayed the first live transatlantic television signal.
1982: The International Whaling Commission decides to end commercial whaling by 1985-86.

BIRTHS
1888: Raymond Chandler, among the architects of detective fiction tropes
1892: Haile Selassie, former emperor of Ethiopia, current Rastafarian deity of sorts
1894: Arthur Treacher, English character actor (those fish & chips were mighty tasty, too)
Various dates: Pee Wee Reese, Don Drysdale and Nomar Garciaparra, baseball players
1921: Calvert DeForest, a onetime Letterman fixture under the name Larry "Bud" Melman. I thought he'd been dead for years, but apparently not.
1936: Anthony Kennedy, U.S. Supreme Court justice
1939: Terence Stamp, British actor.
1967: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Oscar-winning actor and Rochester's current favorite son.
1971: Alison Krauss, who's capable of turning me into a quivering mass of Jell-O.
1989: Daniel Radcliffe, boy wizard.

DEATHS:
1885: Ulysses S. Grant, brilliant general and mediocre president
1948: D.W. Giffith, made a tremendous leap in film with Birth of a Nation. Pity it's so racist.
1955: Cordell Hull, U.S. secretary of state and Nobel Peace Prize recipient.

I apparently didn't follow instructions here. So chagrined was I at learning I also share a birthday with Monica Lewinsky.