With a long waited for and most blessed vacation upon me this week, I flung aside my Kindle stuffed to the gills with free (i.e. public domain) books and went to the New Britain Public Library to scoop up some inter-library loans and get an armload of magazines (which my brain will always hear as “Madga seens” a la The Gunslinger in The Drawing of The Three). So Entertainment Weekly Summer Movie Issue stashed in my book bag I wandered over to The National Review to check out the latest The Bent Pin. And whimpered and dug through the pile until I found the farewell column. Once again, Florence King is retiring. And she’s sick. And I may just turn on the TV or see online one day soon that she’s passed.

Florence King is one of the very few authors I can tell you exactly what libraries have which copies. Or the places and circumstances I found and bought her works.

He: An Irreverent Look at the American Male? Noah Webster Library (the main branch of the West Hartford, CT library), three rows from the left of the Teen Room, very bottom shelf, about four books in. Amazing to even find copy in CT. Had only read excerpt in The Florence King Reader due to rarity and cost of used copies online.

When Sisterhood was in Flower? Fiction sections of both the New Britain Public Library and Southbury Public Library.

Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye? Southbury Public Library. Could find in three minutes at old library location. Would need about 15 minutes to find at the new, huge, shiny building near the other middle school/Heritage Village.

WASP, Where is Thy Sting? New Britain Public Library. Must handle with care because cover is separating from spine in the front. Section on the WASP who goes all rustic with his wife Faith is falling out and needs re-binding. Think might be the only person who has checked out this book over the last 10 years.

Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady? UMO (University of Maine, Orono to the average bloke) library, fiction stacks. Read to pieces.

 

The Barbarian Princess ? Her one and only bodice ripper under the pen name Laura Buchanan, mass market paperback from the 1970s found in an Old Town, Maine junk shop during a visit from my parents in the spring of 1993 for 50 cents right next to an ancient RCA proto-laser disc player just like the one my dad bought years ago.

With Charity Toward None: A Fond Look at Misanthropy? Purchased at hip, independent New Haven bookstore after a trip to the Peabody Museum in 1992 with my mother and one of her friends.

The Florence King Reader? Purchased at the Fifth Avenue Barnes & Noble on my first, ALL BY SELF NYC adventure and devoured on the Metro-North train back to Danbury.

STET, Damnit! Purchased three times, twice on Amazon, third and last time in late March at the Book Barn Downtown for $4 for the hardcover because am certain will never get back from co-worker loaned copy to. Which is okay, because it means Miss Florence King has another rabid reader in “Commander” Reynolds.

That’s just select titles off the top of my head. So my mission this lovely vacation week, (besides eat my own weight in Gummi Bears) is to photocopy all The Bent Pins in the back issues of The National Review.

Because Florence King is worth it.