Each year, our church has a book fair to raise money. It gives people an opportunity to empty their bookshelves, which makes me sad for them but happy for me since I usually manage some good finds. We headed to the book fair this morning. Usually, we go to the “preview,” but we had a busy schedule this weekend, and so when we arrived this morning, the pickings weren’t that great. But I still managed to pick up some good books.

1. Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years by Carl Sandburg. I read this one back in 2016, but I didn’t have a hardcover edition, so it was nice to finally get one—especially one for two bucks.
2. The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. This is the #2 book on Modern Library’s 100 Top Non-Fiction Books of the Twentieth Century. Over time, I am slowly making my way through these Modern Library lists. I’ve read the #1 nonfiction book on the list, The Education of Henry Adams. Now I’ve got another reason to read the William James book.
3. The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination by Daniel J. Boorstin. This is one of those books that randomly caught my eye while browsing.
4. The Best American Sportswriting of the Century, edited by David Halberstam. Sportswriting, like science writing, is too frequently overlooked as an art form, but the best sportswriters are artists of the highest caliber in my mind. Flipping through the contents of this book is like a walk of fame with writers like Gay Talese, Heywood Broun, Westbrook Pegler, Red Smith, Ring Lardner, W.C. Heinz, John Updike, John McPhee, Roger Angell, and many others.
5. Fowler’s Modern English Usage, 2nd Edition. This was probably my best find of the day. I have by my desk a fairly recent version of Fowler’s edited by Jeremy Butterfield, but I have long wanted something closer to the original. Incidentally, Andy Rooney wrote a charming essay on Fowler’s called “Pardon My English.” It can be found in his collection Common Nonsense.

And that’s my haul for this year: history, sports, religion, art, and language. Not bad for someone with eclectic tastes.