Birthday book acquisitions

This is my more-than-slightly belated birthday post. cool

This year, my birthday fell on the last day of our vacation in Cape Cod.  We've been there several times, so we've seen most of the attractions we're interested in at least once.  Thus we had a nice, restful, laid-back week.

I'm not usually much for shopping, but one of my traditional activities on the cape is to go shopping for used books.  (Actually, I do that pretty much everywhere.)  However, this year I was very disappointed to find that my favorite used book shop on Main St. in downtown Hyannis had closed! I'd shopped there every time we've been to the cape and they had a really nice selection.  I define a "nice selection" at a used book store as one that includes a wide range of unusual books on a wide variety of topics (such as this one, which I bought at that shop two years ago and spent my vacation week reading), as opposed to used book stores that carry mostly mass-market paperbacks, usually in the mystery and romance genres.  

Fortunately, I was able to find another good used book shop - Parnassus Book Services in Yarmouth.  We always stay in Hyannis, so it's not as convenient as the other one was, but they've got a great selection.  In fact, it's a bit daunting - the shelves literally go up to the ceiling and they're completely packed.

Yet even with the abbreviated browsing time I had when shopping with a small child, I still managed to find several interesting volumes, including:

  1. Islam by Karen Armstong
  2. A History of the Vikings by Gwyn Jones
  3. The Book of J by Bloom and Rosenberg
  4. Dinosaur Lives by John Horner
  5. Aristophanes' The Forgs
  6. Exodus: The True Story by Ian Wilson 
  7. Discovering Dinosaurs by Norell, Gaffney, and Dingus
  8. Fundamentals of Elcetronic Data Processing: An Introduction To Business Computer Programming, edited by Rice and Freidman

My birthday book haul

As you can see, my book tastes are a bit eclectic.  Two themes that are obvious are my interest in studying religion and Dinosaurs.  The former is a legacy of my BA in Philosophy, while the latter is a result of being the father of a six-year-old boy - I loved dinosaurs when I was young too, and my son's interest in them re-sparked mine.

I couldn't resist the one on the bottom, though: Fundamentals of Electronic Data Processing: An Introduction to Business Computer Programming.  It's from the 1960's, so basically a piece of computing history.  I've got a couple of other computing books of similar vintage sitting on my shelf, though this is certainly the oldest.  One of these days I'll have to read them all the way through and write up some reviews, like I did with my copy of The Mythical Man-Month.  It's always interesting to see just how much has stayed the same despite the radical changes in technology.

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