Oscar Wilde wrote, "I couldn't help it. I can resist everything except temptation." Today I couldn't help making some unplanned purchases when I stumbled upon a 55%-off sale at a used book store. I went to the store for In the Avant Garde: The Prophetic Catholicism of [Bishop] Remi De Roo (which will go well with the other rabble-rousing-Catholic reading I've been doing lately), and I stayed for the sale. Most of the shelves were lightly burdened with mass-market paperbacks, but there were a few islets of nonfiction here and there. I came away with an interesting little mix: The Rise of the Novel by Ian Watt (which will complement my recently purchased Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure; Medieval Women:A Social History of Women in England 450–1500 (which will complement my other books on women's history); and a bright red cloth bound 1928 edition of Plato's Republic from Scribner's "The Modern Student's Library" (which looks like a nice collectible little series). I'm not sure where the book trade would be without great sales and the flimsy rationalizations of incurable bibliophiles!
