I did find a copy of Wallace Stegner's Big Rock Candy Mountain , which I hadn't read. I'm three quarters through it now, and it may be his best book, not counting my favorite, The Spectator Bird. I was surprised that this store, known to book people all over the planet, was so small. Its space was long and narrow and two stories, but I doubt there's a book store in Houston that doesn't have more room. In New York I would buy anything I could afford if it was marked down 40 percent.
Prices there are high as smoke.
It's a bad place to go if you're looking for bargains. We stayed in a small hotel in the East 70s. By paying a little extra, we got a room with a kitchenette that had a microwave and a sink and a pygmy refrigerator about twice the size of a car battery. We figured that would help keep us out of restaurants. We could make coffee and heat up rolls for breakfast and bring in sandwich stuff for lunch and then go out for supper.