Arkansas

I went to a county public library the other day and they had a closet sized room that said bookstore annex where you could peruse shelves of books to buy for $1. It was like a thrift store in that there was no salesmanship to the display, just a bunch of books ordered by author and genre but other than that pretty chaotic and I didn’t recognize the books. It was just judging by title and cover. And I ended up buying 2 books about Nebraska. One written in the 90’s and one in the 1920’s. I’m reading the 90’s book called Goodnight, Nebraska by Tom McNeal and it’s very good. I’m so amazed that I just found a good book on a random shelf and now I’m enjoying it after not being able to find an affordable book to read for a few weeks. What luck. I feel like McNeal’s writing is so easy and so clean and so enjoyable. It’s rich without being gratuitous or wet. Good word economy. And the macro level is where the quality of the book resides rather than the micro line level. Anyway. I know that there are always invisible ley lines influencing our paths or the paths of books to us, things like popularity or location etc, but it felt nice to find a book in what felt like the most organic and random way possible. And to enjoy it? And for $1? Lucky lucky.