Thirty Minutes of Foraging

So yesterday I had a delivery to make in downtown Rogers, a set of engineering drawings to the Rogers city engineer. I've been waiting for this opportunity, a trip to Rogers on my own, so that after my business was up I could take time to visit The Friendly Bookstore, also located in downtown Rogers. I had not been there since they moved to a new location almost three years ago. Downtown Rogers is not far from our office (a little over 6 miles), but with gas prices the way they are I just don't drive 6 miles out of my way. The bookstore turned out to be a mere three or four blocks from the City Admin building.

This is the bookstore run by the Friends of the Rogers Library. It is an outstanding store. Prices are close to what you expect at a thrift store or yard sale, but the supply is huge, more on the lines of a for-profit used book store. I never go in there but that I come out poorer in dollars and richer in volumes. Yesterday was no exception.

Of course, book buying for me is like therapy, or comfort food (and with my restricted diet I need all the alternative comfort food I can get). It boosts my spirit. Yesterday I dropped $17 there, but am the richer for it. Here's what I found:

--Orthodoxy: The American Spectator Anniversary Anthology. 491 pages of conservative essays from 1961-1986.
--The Hogarth Letters. Some letters from the early 1930s commissioned by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Not sure what this is really about—hopefully literature—but the price was right.
--The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Vol 3 1923-1928. I'm not a big fan of VW, but I am a fan of letters, and of writing and writers, so this should be good.
--Coleridge: Poems and Prose Selected by Kathleen Raine. I already have a fair amount of Coleridge material, but nothing to keep at the office. Now I do.
--The Writings of Arminius.

The Arminius book was pricey at $6.00 (well, pricey for me), but it will hopefully turn out to be a treasure. Arminius was a theological influence on John Wesley and the Wesleyan/holiness movement. It's something a wannabe Wesley scholar should know something about. Today I began reading it, and am not disappointed. Except, I am disappointed that it is only Volume 1 of a three volume set. I can get the entire three volumes from an on-line bookstore for a mere $44.00 plus $4 shipping and handling. That would bring my total investment in James Arminius up to $50.00 I'll have to think about that.

None of these will go in my reading pile, which is in desperate need of reshuffling. They are more resource books and occasional reads when nothing else tickles my fancy. I won't touch the letter ones till I finish the letters of A Conan Doyle, begun a year ago but set aside for other things. Still, I'm looking forward to this comfort food.