Last night's wonderful visit to Barnes & Noble.

A rather unexpected financial windfall came our way yesterday so I thought I'd make the best of it by taking the family to Barnes & Noble in OKC. I could spend hours and hours in that store, but the wife is not quite as smitten with it as I am so the visit was not quite as long as I would have liked.
Notwithstanding I was able to find a few items to buy last night and saw a lot more that I ear-marked for future purchase.
This is what a weblog is for, right?

I'm currently on a quest to find a certain book I had when I was a teenager. Unfortunately I have forgotten the title and the author's name, so I've been checking the new age section of every bookstore I go to, hoping to locate it by the unique artwork. Which has very little, if anything to do with all this, but I thought I'd let you know what I was doing in the new age section (which has lately become primarily a clearinghouse for Wicca books and the unbelievable number of tomes that have been put out by Sylvia Browne (who should thank Montel Williams for all the exposure).
As I expected, the book I'd been nostalgic about was not there, but I did find a nice, not-too-expensive paper bound copy of "The Urantia Book", which is something I've found fascinating since first perusing a copy at a junior college library 27 years ago. It's difficult to explain what "The Urantia Book" is all about. It's supposedly written by beings from another world, a message to "Urantia" (their name for earth) concerning some lofty topics I won't go into right now.
No, it's not science fiction, even though I kind of read it that way. It's over 2000 pages long, a huge extraterrestrial bible, of sorts. I don't imagine I'll plumb it's depths during the years I have left here on Urantia, but I will find it to be interesting reading, for what it's worth.

My ongoing fascination with Eastern religions (especially Hinduism) rolls on, having recently read "Bhagavad Gita As It Is" by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, and I've also been regularly reading the Srimad Bhagavatam online. The online stuff is great (especially since the print version is WAY out of my price range), but I wanted something good in book form (I'll always prefer the page to the screen).
So I snagged this translation of excerpts from the Upanishads. It was also available in a nice 3-book collector's edition, packaged with the Bhagavad Gita and the Dhammapada. I would have picked that one up, had I not just read the Bhagavad Gita. As it was, I saved a little money and put the set on the back burner.

For two straight months I've looked for "Art in America" magazine at Barnes & Noble. You'd think they'd have that one in stock...it's the store where I bought my first copy several months ago. Alas, for whatever reason they have not had it. But this time I wasn't too awful disappointed, as I perused the art section of the periodicals and found "ArtForum". A mammoth publication (over 500 pages on thick, glossy paper), it is stuffed with reproductions of contemporary/modern art, the stuff I like the best. Some of the material is a bit more "confrontational" (read: disturbing) than what I'm used to from my main art magazine, "ARTNews", but that's okay. I can deal with some of that...even though I don't think I'd want TOO much of it regularly.
I don't think "ArtForum" publishes all that often, probably a seasonal thing, because it's just too massive, but at 10 bucks it's really a bargain and I highly recommend it.

Finally I thought I'd pick up a copy of "mental_floss" magazine (actually I got this at Target, having left Barnes & Noble at my wife's prompting). I'd seen this thing over the years at various newsstands, but I figured it was just for Mensa initiates. But looking through it yesterday I found several articles that seemed interesting (and certainly not above my level of intelligence, not being of the Mensa clan). Flipping through it last night I was actually reminded of the National Lampoon in quite a few places. Which is a good thing, since I've missed the Lampoon for a long time. We'll see what "mental_floss" is all about and if it doesn't turn into a "scholar-snob" rag I'll check it out again.


There are literally hundreds of items that I'd like to buy at Barnes and Noble, but I have not won my million dollars on "Deal or No Deal" yet, so I have a list of things I really want the next time I go there, and these are at the top of that list:

Neale Donald Walsch has written several books since the time I drifted away from regularly reading them. I want just about all of them, but this one, "Tomorrow's God" is the one that I'm especially interested in at the moment. When I first saw it a couple of years ago I figured it would be an affront to my Christian beliefs. Now that I'm dead set on challenging those beliefs I can't wait to spend some time in this book, and to re-acquaint myself with all of Walsch's writing.



I hadn't seen this DVD anywhere before, a 4 disc set of "The Best of the Electric Company". Wow, what a blast from the past this is going to be! Younger folks may not remember "The Electric Company" but it was sort of a "Sesame Street for older kids. The nostalgia factor alone guarantees that I'll be getting this next time I go to B&N (unless it's a LOT less expensive from Amazon). This one has just replaced the 4 seasons of "NYPD Blue" that are currently available as number one DVD priority.

Just a really nice, inexpensive copy of "Bleak House", which I haven't read in about 20 years. I've been searching on eBay for a nice set of Complete Charles Dickens works, so if I'm successful in that quest I obviously won't need to pick this up. But it is the next Dickens novel I want to read.

After reading John Irving's excellent "A Widow for One Year", noting the numerous references to Graham Green, I thought it would behoove me to investigate his work (something I probably should have done a long time ago, but I'm ashamed to say I'd been ignorant of the man until reading "Widow". Penguin has a nice introductory sampler in "The Portable Graham Greene" which looks like a pretty good starting point.

Irving has a newer book out ("Until I Find You"), which I do want, but right now I'm interested in reading what he wrote right after "A Widow for One Year". I should have picked it up long ago, as Irving is probably my favorite contemporary author. I put off "Widow" for the longest time, saving it for a time when I didn't have anything I just REALLY had to read, knowing that it would be so much better than the other modern fiction out there. And it was.
I've put off "The Fourth Hand" far too long and I mean to correct that soon.