New and Used Books
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We BUY, SELL & TRADE your paperback and hardcover books!
Book Again features a large selection of current best-sellers
as well as many hard-to-find & out-of-print titles!


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Book Again is located in Torrance, California, at 5039 Torrance Blvd.,
just west of Anza (between Shakey's Pizza and McDonald's restaurant)
Book Again is open 11am to 4pm (CLOSED MONDAYS) (310) 542-1156
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Both Mother's Day and Father's Day are coming up soon. Do you have a mother or father who loves to read? Not only does Book Again offer a fantastic selection to choose from, we also have convenient gift certificates, which are always very welcome to Moms and Dads. And, of course, for many parents, the best gift might just be for you to accompany them on a trip to Book Again one day!

Also, we've recently obtained a good assortment of Marvel and DC comic books at Book Again. Since these comics have been so popular in the past, you might not want to wait until others have picked them over -- so come in soon and check them out!

—Sheryl

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From the Editor:
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  • Recent Fiction -- hardbacks (published within 6 months)
  • Recent Fiction -- paperbacks (published within 9 months)
  • Westerns
  • Mysteries
  • General Fiction
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Book Again Feature Articles
by Staff

Don't miss these fantastic articles, written by various Book Again staff members.

Click on the link below to view our Feature Article archive!

click here for our feature article archives

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  Baked Penne
  • 16 oz penne or Mostaccoli (or whichever tube pasta you prefer)
  • 6 Italian sausages
  • 16 oz ricotta cheese
  • 1 tbls Parsley
  • 2 eggs, lightly beaten
  • 12 oz mozzarella cheese, shredded
  • 1 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
  • Pepper to taste

Make a big pot of red sauce.

Grill sausages and simmer them in the sauce for 2-3 hours.

After they are nice and tender, remove sausages from the sauce and let them cool down for 10 min. Then slice into 1/4" pieces.

Preheat oven to 350°.

Cook pasta according to package, but reduce cooking time by 2 mins.

Drain pasta.

Set aside 1/2 cup of mozzarella and 1/4 cup of Parmesan.

Combine the rest in a big bowl (pasta, sliced sausages, ricotta, eggs, mozzarella, Parmesan, pepper, and parsley). Mix thoroughly, slowly adding sauce to the mixture until you get a nice dark
pink color.

Spread some sauce over the bottom of a 9x13x2" baking dish.

Spread pasta mixture evenly in the baking dish.

Top with a little sauce, then add the reserved mozzarella and Parmesan.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, or for about 15 minutes after it begins to bubble around edges.

Allow to stand 8-10 minutes before serving.

Serves 10-12

Want more delicious food ideas? Check out our Recipe Archive!

 


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"This is the first of what we hope to be a monthly newsletter. Our purpose is to make it informative, as well as fun. It's certainly been fun putting together this first one!

My oldest son Joe, who you may have seen working here back in March, has agreed to be our editor. His qualifications are excellent, as he edited all my papers through college a few years ago. He's agreed to fit the newsletter into his busy schedule of work & school on the condition that I let him write his own folklore column -- don't miss it, his interest is contagious."

With those words the tradition of the Book Again Newsletter began.

As I recall, it was November of 1985, and my brothers and I had assembled at my mother's for dinner. During the course of the meal, she announced that she planned to open a store of some sort, and asked us for ideas. I personally pushed for a used record store, but the winning concept was, as you well know, a used Book Store. Brother Mike and I volunteered to help set it up, and Mike further signed on as Store Manager.

On opening day all the brothers were there, helping out to an extent but mostly, I fear, just getting in each other's way. I believe Mom has proof of this on video.

At any rate, the store opened in March of 1986. Mom had been searching for a name for the store, and, mindful of a song I had once written called "Look Again," I jokingly suggested "Book Again."

She liked it.

That Summer I got my first computer (an IBM XT with a whopping 20MB hard drive!), and two months later Mom hit upon the idea of starting a newsletter. (If this sounds familiar, it should -- some eleven years later I would finally go online, and two months after that so would Book Again.)

She asked me to put the newsletter together, which I did, and continued to do single-handedly through the early '90s (with monthly contributions from Mom and Mike).

At the time I had been getting increasingly interested in folklore, and sensed a golden opportunity. I based my involvement on one stipulation -- that I be allowed to contribute a folklore column on a regular basis. She readily agreed, and it worked out to the benefit of all -- the column kept the newsletter from becoming just another throwaway bit of advertising -- it became something that customers would actually look forward to.

It became frequently a royal pain as well, especially as work and school took up more and more of my time.

I enjoyed it, however, and still do -- though I never would have guessed that I'd still be doing it so many years later!

A word about what I consider to be "folklore" is, perhaps, in order. Certainly the usual examples apply: myths and legends, roots of old sayings and songs, and the origins of holidays -- the latter a theme I would devote myself to exclusively for the first six months.

Folklore, to me, goes beyond that, however. Any historic or public figure, if colorful enough, inevitably has some small bit of apocrypha attached to their story, whether they be Presidents, gunslingers, pioneers, baseball players, or Rock Stars. From Abe Lincoln's seances, to Babe Ruth's "calling the home run," to Stuyvesant's ghost, even to my own great uncle Adam Walsh's exploits under Knute Rockne in the 1920's ... it's all there, and it's all wonderfully good -- and entirely appropriate to the world of Folklore.

Additionally, the origins of the art of the Magician, rumors of Secret Societies that may or may not yet wield influence to this day, the birth of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer -- all such matters, from the trivial to the profound to the occasionally spooky, are fair game for my musings.

Still with me? Faithful readers may have already noticed that most of the examples just cited have yet to make an appearance in one of these columns. Quite so, as the columns continue to this day. Consider the above a "teaser" -- a glimpse of things to come.

But I've rambled enough -- the blessing and curse of writing online, free of space constraints. Having said that, I must point out that all the columns prior to September of 1997 were written only for the printed newsletter, and as such they were frequently severely edited even as they were being written. I had no choice -- I only had a finite amount of space.

It is partly for that reason that no fewer than 16 of the original columns were reprinted and (usually) greatly expanded for subsequent online appearances. When such is the case you will not see the original column -- instead I'll interject as I'm doing now with a pointer to where the improved, expanded version may be found.

From October 1986 (our first issue) through the end of 1987 the newsletter and column appeared almost every month. In 1988 we briefly went bi-monthly, as we were mailing every single issue to customers, and postage was getting a little out of hand. In July of '88 we hit upon a compromise -- we returned to the monthly schedule, but elected to mail out only three issues a year. The remaining issues were available only in the store.

By January of the next year (1989) we were all just too busy to maintain any sort of monthly schedule, and so the newsletter and column went bi-monthly again, and would remain so until July 1991. That issue, there was no room for a folklore column, so instead I inserted a little box promising a return of the column "next time."

"Next time" would take six months to arrive. There were various logistic reasons for this gap, most notably being Mom's decision to move to Valencia, but for however many reasons (I recall being frightfully busy at school, for one thing) there would be no newsletter for the remainder of 1991.

We returned in January 1992, but would publish far fewer issues (four per year from 1992 to 1994), and on occasion there would be no folklore column. We were all moving on with our lives, and it seemed only a matter of time until the inevitable happened.

The inevitable happened in mid 1995, when I left the South Bay to move to the San Fernando Valley. None of us were online yet (the internet was still in its infancy), so any continuing contributions on my end became too much trouble to attempt. Mike was editing the newsletter by this point, and though issue #49 (Jan - May 1995) included the optimistic statement: "the folklore column will return in the next issue of the newsletter! (hopefully)." It was not to be. The September / December 1994 column would be my last for years.

The rest you know by now. Book Again's newsletter went online in September 1997, and the folklore column returned with a vengeance! Editing chores were divided between our Uncle Mike for the online edition and Brother Mike for the printed version. Then by 2004, Brother Dan (this is starting to sound like a monastery) took over the whole darn mess.

And, though circumstances forced a brief disappearing act on my part from May 2002 to March 2003, I have returned, and continue to write the folklore column (I have returned to the South Bay as well, incidentally). As always, I trust the best is yet to be -- but I have long wanted to make previous columns available to our readers.

With these words I now write, and the help of long-suffering Brother Dan, this dream is now a reality.

A quick legal note: All columns found herein are copyrighted to me, and should not be used without permission. My ode to Charles Schulz, "Charlie at the Bat," has found its way elsewhere on the net, and I have no problem with that as I was in communication with the webmaster of that site and a "copyright Joe Nolte" appears on the page. Generally I don't mind seeing my words take root in other places, but I strongly object to seeing my words without my authorship mentioned...

In short, if you want to cite any of this stuff, let us know first!

It's time to bid this overlong introduction goodbye, and get to the folklore! As I said, I spent the first six months delving into the origins of Holidays. To my delight, the first issue of the newsletter was to appear in October -- and Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. It was a good way to start things rolling...

click here to start digging into our Folklore archive
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"...the most important stuff I've learned, I think I've learned from novels. It has to do with empathy. It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of grays, but there's still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive for that and work for that. And the notion that it's possible to connect with someone else even though they're very different from you."—Barack Obama
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We are located in Torrance, California, at 5039 Torrance Blvd.,
just west of Anza, between Shakey's Pizza and McDonald's restaurant.
Book Again is open 11am to 4pm (CLOSED MONDAYS) (310) 542-1156

Join our mailing list to be informed of future sales!

Site updated 5/18/17 • click here for our newsletter archive
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