I knocked off my first book in the year-long Chunkster Challenge, Robert Coover’s The Public Burning. I picked up my copy from Encore Books in Philadelphia. (Encore was a chain somewhat like our failed Crown Books here, trafficking in new releases, overstocks and remainders, and other castoffs. My copy, originally retailing new at $13, sold as a recycled library book for $1.98.) The last time I started the book, I bailed out at page 44, and marked my place with a phone directory listing notice from Bell of Pennsylvania.
Some time later in the next eleven months, after I finish class reading and everything else on my shelf, I am slated for Apollo’s Angels, Watership Down, and The Annotated Origin, Charles Darwin annotated by James T. Costa.