Books

I just started reading Roddy Doyle's The Commitments...if it sounds familiar, it was also used as the basis for a rather good movie in the early 90s. I've had it on my shelf for a while, and I think I'm reading it now just so I can read someone espouse the coolness of Otis Redding and Sam Cooke, et al. It's heavy on the "Irish" dialogue, and the version of the book I have actually contains three novels. I'm gonna have to split that level of "Irish" up somehow. (He spells all the dialogue phonetically, so you can imagine how the characters sound when they speak. Clever, sure, but everything is moderation.)
That fine selection notwithstanding, nothing else on my shelf of books to read looks all together interesting at the moment, so I decided to trawl the used bookstores of the area to find my next read. I headed first to the Cranbury Book Worm, and within 15 minutes, I already had four books in my hand. Had I the time and the inclination, I could have done some serious, serious damage in that place. The books are really inexpensive, and there are stacks behind stacks behind stacks of them. I only skimmed the surface, and I was still able to find some good ones.
I had fully intended to also hit the used book section of Micawbers Books in Princeton, but seeing as how I found some good things at the book worm, I may just hold off on that place until the next time I get the book shopping urge.
Going to Cranbury also reminded me of the lunch hours I used to take there when I worked near the area. We'd head to the pizza place and then spend the remaining time going after books. I've always been impressed about how they put plaques on each of the homes along Main Street saying when they were built. Coming from strip mall city in Florida, it was a nice dose of history.