Book Hauls!

Received another book in the Penguin Travel Library -- my copy has a different cover: Peter Levi's Light Garden of the Angel King, about travels in pre-Soviet Afghanistan.

In a way, this book will complement my just-finished reading of Harrer's Seven Years in Tibet, which ends just as Mao's Communists are invading that ancient kingdom, which simply asked to be left alone. Of course, the sequel to Harrer's book is his Return to Tibet, which I haven't read yet. He found his beloved Lhasa ruined, which is just what you'd expect from a pack of criminals.
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As for Tibet and China....
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Quoth John Lennon:
"[FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]After the revolution you have the problem of keeping things going, of sorting out all the different views. It's quite natural that revolutionaries should have different solutions, that they should split into different groups and then reform, that's the dialectic, isn't it - but at the same time they need to be united against the enemy, to solidify a new order. I don't know what the answer is; obviously Mao is aware of this problem and keeps the ball moving."

[/FONT]Pathetic.
 
Another travel book -- Colin Thubron's Journey into Cyprus -- I read this about 20 years ago & gave my copy to a friend who was living in Nicosia at the time, so this was a replacement.
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i have just downloaded Gavin Smith's "War In Heaven" and "The Age Of Scorpio".
 
Somne recent acquisitions...

The Enchanted Wanderer and other stories - Nikolai Leskov *I have Extollager to thank for bringing to my attention this author. Leskov was a favourite of Anton Chekov and admired by Tolstoy who some will claim as Russia's greatest 19th Century author to arguably Russia's greatest 20th century writer in Mikhail Bulgakov, along with two of Latin America's most notable authors in Julio Cortzar and Gabriella Garcia Marquez...sorry I keep using the term 'great' but these are some of the most prominent authors of their respective countries. As well as the acknowledged masterpiece The Lady Macbeth of Mitsensk, it contains many of his other best known novellas and stories. This is a very generous, highly acclaimed and I have to say beautifully produced collection I look forward to reading.

El Filibusterismo - Jose Rizal. Following on from Penguin Black Classic's production of the first part of this, the Philippine's most famous EPIC story, comes the less well known sequel. Blurb: José Rizal was one of the leading champions of Filipino nationalism and independence. His masterpiece, Noli Me Tangere, is widely considered to be the foundational novel of the Philippines. In this riveting continuation, which picks up the story thirteen years later, Rizal departs from the Noli's themes of innocent love and martyrdom to present a gripping tale of obsession and revenge. Clearly demonstrating Rizal's growth as a writer, and influenced by his exposure to international events, El Filibusterismo is a thrilling and suspenseful account of Filipino resistance to colonial rule that still resonates today.

A Grain of Wheat - Ngugi Wa Thiong'o *This is a quite famous work by one of Kenya's best known if not best known writer, certainly a widely respected one inside and outside of Africa. It would be interesting to know if Conn is familiar with this author at all? As Chinua Achebe rightly declares at the beginning of this book, not enough is known regarding the rich diversity (and quality) of the African canon, something he hopes Penguin with their initiative of the Penguin African Writers Series hopes to redress and something I myself would like to also champion. Blurb: Set in the wake of the Mau Mau rebellion and on the cusp of Kenya's independence from Britain, A Grain of Wheat follows a group of villagers whose lives have been transformed by the 1952–1960 Emergency. At the center of it all is the reticent Mugo, the village's chosen hero and a man haunted by a terrible secret. As we learn of the villagers' tangled histories in a narrative interwoven with myth and peppered with allusions to real-life leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta, a masterly story unfolds in which compromises are forced, friendships are betrayed, and loves are tested.
 
Star Wars: Blueprints (wide release hardcover)

Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi.
 
Because I didn't have anything else to read :rolleyes:, I got 3 volumes of Isaac Asimov (SFBC hardcover versions of a couple of collections I have in paperback and a collection of his science essays), 6 volumes of Ben Bova, 6 of Burroughs' Tarzan books, 2 volumes of Hal Clement (recovering one I'd lost and getting Heavy Planet to get all the Mesklin stuff), 4 volumes of Heinlein (decided to recover the late-era Heinlein even though I don't much like it and these complete that), 4 volumes of Jack McDevitt (mostly from the Benedict series), 2 volumes of Charles Stross, and 3 of Tim Zahn.

I also got a double-shot of Ballard - an SFBC omnibus of The Drowned World & The Wind from Nowhere, a John Barnes, a Greg Bear, Robert Chambers' The King in Yellow, a Cherryh in a better edition than I had, a Niven, a Niven/Pournelle, Pangborn's A Mirror for Observers, a George O. Smith I'd lost, a great score in finding John Shirley's first novel, Transmaniacon which is only available in a 1979 Zebra mass market paperback original (it must have sold at least 20 copies), Steakley's Armor, a Steele, and Manly Wade Wellman's Who Fears the Devil?.

I also picked up 5 anthologies of Hartwell's (four SF annuals and The Dark Descent), along with a Silverberg anthology and a Strahan and an issue of IAsfm from 1981. And an SF/NF book from the SFWA on writing and selling SF - way out of date but should be interesting nonetheless.

Finally (whew) I got 5 history books: on the Celts, the Vikings, the (US) Civil War, Southern history, and the 1930s, as well as a book of philosophical history: Hegel Kierkegaard Marx, as well as The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty and - for the heck of it - a novel of Pynchon.

To explain this paroxysm, it's the annual library book sale and now I don't have to buy any more books until the next one. :D All paperbacks for $1 (including tradepapers no matter how tall or thick) except for four hardcovers for a steep $5 apiece (only something like four paperbacks were actually ex-library books; the rest were good-condition (sometimes great/mint) donations). But people buy 3 or 4 new hardcovers for what I paid for my ~60 books. (It makes me feel better to tell myself that, anyway.)

(My only complaint is that they'd bizarrely dumped poetry, classic fiction, and the latest crap fiction all together as "General Fiction" - which poetry isn't - and there was no philosophy section at all and I never did see where they dumped philosophical works and I didn't realize any of this until basically too late to go through it well and, given all the crap dominating the good stuff in those large piles, that was all pretty cursory and random, which is why I got so little non-SF.)

Side-story, because this post isn't long enough: I have volumes 1 and 5-8 of the 9 volume Pelican History of England. And they actually had copies from that series at the sale and I got excited when I saw the first one, thinking I might finally complete the set and they had... yep, volumes 1 and 5-8. Not just some of this and some of that but exactly what I already had and nothing I didn't. What odds? (I mean, I gather that the partial-20th century 9th volume would seem particularly dated - a little too much like "old current events" - and the 2nd-4th volumes on the Middle Ages are... on the Middle Ages. So I get that those would be less likely to show but, still.)

Oh, and I'm glad I was able to keep control and not burst out laughing. There was some weird type on a Burroughs book so that I initially read it as A Fishing Man of Mars. "And John Carter made a mighty cast and sat back and reeled in the line with great vigor, cleaving the water with his finely wrought line!"
 
Downtown in our little town we have a couple of large covered bins with hatches in the sides, through which one can throw paper, or glass and plastic, to be recycled. I had some plastic containers to get rid of while waiting for my wife to run an errand. That done, since she wasn't back yet, I idly looked in the paper bin.

And found 16 science fiction and fantasy paperbacks. I found most of them after climbing into the bin and exploring -- no one else (except, soon, my patient wife) being around. The haul:

Ballantine paperbacks of The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, and The Two Towers
Two Conklin anthologies, including 13 Above the Night, which I didn't have, and Another Part of the Galaxy, which I did
A 40c Ace Double of Philip Jose Farmer -- Cache from Outer Space and The Celestial Blueprint
Aldiss's Starship
Sheckley's Journey Beyond Tomorrow
Van Vogt's Two Hundred Million AD (The Book of Ptath)
Ivan Howard's anthology Novelets of Science Fiction (Blish, Simak, Anderson, Clarke et al.)
James Gunn's The Immortals
Noel Keyes' anthology Contact (Asimov, Bradbury, Brown, et al)
Ellison's Partner in Wonder
Robert Hoskins' anthology Infinity Three (Simak, Silverberg, et al.)
Robin Scott Wilson's anthology Calrion II (Ellison, Knight, Le Guin, et al.)

and, the most obscure one --

J. Hunter Holly's The Green Planet

There were other books to take, too, including eight on woodcraft for my son if he wants them, and one of John Buchan's less-known novels, The Path of the King.

A nice copy of The Atomic Age Opens (Aug. 1945), a "Genuine Pocket Book." Walter Sullivan's We Are Not Alone ("Winner of the 1965 International Non-Fiction Prize").

Some of these books have a bit of an odor, so they might not turn out to be keepers.
 
Now that's what a book haul is all about 'Tollie. I'd have dived in head first!

Picked up my special order today:

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As soon as I saw it I knew I had to have it. A glance at the table of contents (The First Phase; Towards Socialism; Socialism "True and False'; The Philosophy of the New Republican; Human Nature; A Personal Chapter; The Spirit of Wells) pretty much assured me this was neither an in depth study of sf nor comprehensive view of Wells' part in its development but it had "time well spent" written all over it. My next read.

Our public library will be having its Spring book sale in a few weeks and I hope to find some stuff as good as what J-Sun found at his.
 
Last library book sale: First five volumes of Jean Auel's Earth's Children series (Clan of the Cave Bear . . .)

Over the last few months, I've gotten the entire Ursula LeGuin Earthsea trilogy and the first four books of Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Stories over PaperBackSwap.com. The Hunger Games came in yesterday, for which I traded Orson Scott Card's Memory of Earth (the series just wasn't working for me).
 
dask said:
Now that's what a book haul is all about 'Tollie. I'd have dived in head first!
Click to expand...

I am having my doubts, though... seems most or all of them do smell. It doesn't smell like the usual musty book odor. I'm wondering if it is the smell of mice or rats, since some of the books had been chewed on -- although that Conklin 13 Above the Night, which I'd like for my Conklin group, is the only one I took for myself that showed dental damage. I'm thinking that a Lysol treatment might help at least to mask the odor. I might keep them, but store them in a place well away from any of my other books. Could keep 'em in the outhouse on our property...

We have lots of farmers around here and I wonder if the books had been stored in a barn. Many of the books I didn't take concerned farming, and there were a bunch of old issues of a magazine -- I think a general-interest mag aimed at families who farm -- called The Farm. I didn't look any of them over. I hope nobody says -- "But Jack Gaughan used to do the art!" or something like that.

Years ago my son found an old hardcover copy of Doyle's Lost World with photo plates from the 1925 (?) movie adaptation in a local recycling bin. Anybody else have interesting recycle rescues to tell about?
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By the way, this all reminds me of a story relating to my wife's adventures as a bagpipe player. Eventually she bought a fine stand of pipes of her own, but she started to learn on a set that had seen better days. It seems the bagpipe had been stored in a box in a chicken coop here in North Dakota, and that when the box was opened, it contained as well as the bagpipe the skeleton of a cat.
 
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Picked up some Damon Knight paperbacks somewhere long time ago that reeked of a mixture of gasoline and oil. I kept them but I kept them separated from the rest of my collection. Saw a Richard Matheson collection I wanted at a yard sale thirty some years that had a funny smell to it. When I got a closer sniff---yep, you guessed it---urine! Threw it down and went home and washed my hands. There is a danger to book hunting and it isn't being shot at by another hunter.:(
 
Some years ago I was researching something about the history of space travel for a short article I was writing for a reference book, and the book I got from a college library absolutely reeked of tobacco. I felt sick all the time I was digging out the information I needed.
 
Extollager said:
I am having my doubts, though... seems most or all of them do smell. It doesn't smell like the usual musty book odor. I'm wondering if it is the smell of mice or rats, since some of the books had been chewed on -- although that Conklin 13 Above the Night, which I'd like for my Conklin group, is the only one I took for myself that showed dental damage.
Click to expand...

I misstated... this book is damaged, but not from teeth. Trivial; just setting the record straight. ...Years ago we had a rabbit, which chewed a Dover book, The Best Tales of Hoffmann, give it credit for a taste for the classics.
 
Hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did, AE.

Ordered A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings. Can't wait!
 
While we're on the subject of lurid and wonderful pulp covers, picked this little gem up from an Oxfam store in Upper Street, Islington recently:

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