Has it all just been wasted time? Nah, I don't think so, but I was reflecting recently that I hadn't heard the song Wasted Time, one of the best by the Eagles, in quite a while.
Meanwhile, my Saturday quest began from the realization of something else I hadn't partaken in quite a while, a burger from Smash Burger. My last year in Colorado involved working a schedule that left me eating dinner very late most nights, usually after 9:30pm. There weren't too many places still open at that hour, at least in my part of Denver, so I found myself eating entirely too many burgers and fries. The best burgers were at the new, Colorado-based chain Smash Burger. They are all-over along the Front Range, and are expanding rapidly around the country. There's only one in New Jersey, with another due to open soon. That first one is not too far from where I live, but still too out of the way for me to have gone there before today.
I had seen its location on the map, and knew it was close to a good used bookstore, the Montclair Book Center. When I did a Google map check, I realized the two places were actually within a mile or so of each other, and so I decided to scratch two itches on one trip. I hoped I might find some old Harold Lamb biographies, or other pulpy treasure.
I found the Smash Burger easily, and my lunch was a wonderful flashback to the burgers I had enjoyed back in Colorado. I've been preaching the Smash Burger gospel to my new coworkers, who are mostly Five Guys disciples. One of them tried it so far, and he loved it, so there's hope I can convert the others.
The Montclair Book Center didn't have any Lamb that I needed. However, I found more than enough good reading material. I bought a used mass market paperback of The Bonehunters, Book 6 of The Malazan Book of the Fallen, continuing my streak of finding quality pre-owned versions of Erikson's books. In trade format, also used, I acquired R. Scott Baker's The Darkness That Comes Before. This is the first volume of his Prince of Nothing series, a set of books that is often recommended to Erikson and Glen Cook fans. I've never read any of it, but I'm aware of it, and seized this opportunity to have it at hand for eventual consumption. I also picked up a recent used Doonesbury collection that I didn't own yet.
The real gem for me was the fourth book I found. I was looking in the humor section, and had just added the Doonesbury to my stack. I noticed Wasted Time playing from a nearby speaker, and stopped to listen to that sad tale of too much hard living. That's when I realized that one of my long quests had ended. Facing me on the shelf was Anka Radakovich's Sexplorations.
I doubt many people remember Radakovich these days. Her heyday was 1996, when the sex columnist for Details Magazine was a regular guest of late-night TV hosts such as Conan O'Brien. Her book The Wild Girls Club, a collection of her magazine articles, was a best-seller in hardcover. I bought the paperback and found it wildly amusing. I loved her bawdy adventures among the allegedly-hip and cool crowd on both coasts. They pushed the same buttons for me as Berlin's music, with it's lurid, tawdry depictions of the nightlife of the coked-up, over-sexed party set in LA. I generally like my music and my reading to be full of epic, manly adventure, but I'm occasionally a sucker for a woman embracing her inner sex-kitten.
Sexplorations was released in hardcover in 1997. I planned to wait for the paperback, but the book apparently tanked, and never came out in a cheaper edition! I'm not sure what went wrong, and why Radakovich dropped off societal radar. I did a web search on her, and she's still writing articles here and there. Be that as it may, I've kept an eye out for many years for a used hardcover copy, but it took me 13 years to bump into one! I read a good chunk of it at various stops this afternoon, and was again amused and entertained (it's not a long book). I'm not sure the wait was entirely worth it, but it put a smile on my face none-the-less.
Minor Glen Cook Update: Later in the day I had a look at a Barnes & Noble, and saw that Angry Lead Skies, Book 10 in the Garrett, P.I. series, has been reprinted. This is good news for those who still need the book, and weren't looking forward to paying the $17 or more (plus shipping) that the book commanded on ebay. I don't understand Penguin/Roc's plans for this series, since several of the recent reprints are again out of print (Old Tin Sorrows, Dread Brass Shadows, and Whispering Nickel Idols), and two of the back titles haven't been reprinted at all (Red Iron Nights and Deadly Quicksilver Lies, which often sell for over $20 each on ebay). The next Garrett volume, Gilded Latten Bones, is still scheduled for release in November of this year. Perhaps some of the out of print volumes will be re-released to coincide with this.
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