Mall bookstores yield delightful surprises

Well, not that often, in my experience; but an end-of-Spring-Break shopping trip today yielded a few good finds from the promo table:

I had a copy of The Compleat Angler already, but it's in a very old, not very inviting Everyman's edition.  This 2010 edition has a reader-friendly layout, inviting illustrations, and draws you in even if you have no interest in fish.  It was $2 on the promo table.

I liked the looks of this Best-Loved Poems collection-I might save it for a gift.  Also $2.

Last good deal:  a copy of Flanagan's Smart Home for $3.99.  (And look at that:  the Chapters.ca website is offering it for $3.29 (Canadian), even better than what I paid.)  This is a sort of consumer guide as well as a lesson in history and technology.  For example, why our super-size-me, bigger-is-better culture is being duped into buying extra-big, extra-fluffy towels that don't dry bodies that well, and then take forever to get dry themselves...why little beribboned waste baskets aren't nearly adequate for discreet and sanitary bathroom trash disposal...and why the French Press really is the most sensible coffee-maker choice.  (The Deputy Headmistress would agree with that one.)   And I've never actually heard of anyone curling up in linen sheets, outside of an Elton John song. Very interesting, even if we don't totally agree with some of her environmental choices (Mr. Fixit still prefers incandescent bulbs, for several reasons).  The only real caution I would give about this book, at least the bedroom and bathroom chapters, is that they're rather full of...bedroom and bathroom stuff.  Seriously--you can read bits to your kids, but please don't turn them loose with it.

Some days you just never know what you're going to learn.