Another fun-filled trip to Half-Price Books

My wife and I just finished dinner at a local Italian restaurant when I suggested that we walk over to Half-Price bookstore just across the parking lot.

I did not know this until I entered, but everything in the store was 20% off. My first pit stop as always was the Biblical reference section. For months I have been eye-balling the late Samuel Terrien's magnum opus, The Psalms: Strophic Structure and Theological Commentary in the Eerdmans Critical Commentary series. The reason I had not picked up the massive commentary earlier was that Half-Price was still asking $29.99 for it, a far cry from the original hardcover price of $95.00, but still not inexpensive enough even with the 20% off sale. Well, nothing was different on this trip; the price tag was still the same and I again resigned myself to waiting. It wasn't more than a minute or two later that I noticed another volume in the series, namely, Philemon by Barth and Blanke , which incidentally, I had purchased from Half-Price a few years ago under $10, was reduced to $6.98. I thought I would bring this to the attention to an employee at Half-Price. When I explained that I was curious why one of the volumes in the ECC series had been marked down to $6.98 he replied that since both volumes arrived around the same time that he would be happy to reduce the Psalms volume to $6.98 as well! Plus, I saved another 20% ending up paying about $5.60 for it in the end.

The second cool purchase was another Lincoln volume, Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words by Ronald C. White, Jr. who holds the distinction of writing the definitive biography on Lincoln and the best book I have read this year. This purchase was about $6.oo in the end, making my two purchases total under $12.00!