Book Hauls!

[K. Riehl]

Ebay has been kind, Startide Rising by David Brin, Skylark Three by the immortal E.E. Doc Smith, and Bullard of the Space Patrol ed. by Andre Norton. All first editions and I got all three for $72 US.

 

[dask]

Found these at my favorite thrift store that truly lives up to its description. All three cost $1.03 with tax.

 

[Extollager]

Cirlot's Dictionary of Symbols, recommended by a favorite professor from years gone by...

Also If This be Heresy, a study of the influence on John Milton of the ancient mystical theologian Origen...Letters of a Modern Mystic by literacy pioneer Frank "Each One Teach One" Laubach...

and A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural.... by sociologist Peter Berger...and I've ordered another city directory, this time a 1936 Portland, Oregon, one, from when my mom was a girl...

 

[Extollager]

Does anyone else have an interest in any city directories?

I'm not interested in city directories in general, but ones for times and places with which I have some personal or (perhaps someday) literary connection. When this one arrives, I'll have only four directories, and I don't see this turning into the core of some burgeoning collection.

 

[Extollager]

Does anyone else have an interest in any city directories?

This book arrived earlier this week and has already provided much matter for browsing. The main interest relates to the personal connection. But there also is a bit of that time-travel effect. For example, one finds that there's a section listing "laundries." It is followed by a section "laundries -- Chinese and Japanese."

 

[Extollager]

Coventry Patmore's Courage in Politics arrived. This is a 1969 reprint of the 1921 collection of the Victorian poet and essayist's short pieces; there's a bibliography listing his contributions to the St. James's Gazette at the back: pieces that Arthur Machen singled out for esteem when remarking on the high quality of journalism that had once been possible. I expect to be reading some of these soon and commenting on them at the Forbears of Machen thread:

http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/547803-literary-forbears-of-arthur-machen.html

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

I found a local book club in town which is going to do Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy soon, and I managed to pick up a used copy in decent condition for twenty-two cents (including tax.)

 

[TheShadowsandSilence]

I've been lucky to find some gems in the charity shops recently, usually it's absolute dross round here. My most recent haul:

John Adams - David McCullough
Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West - Cormac McCarthy
Elric at the End of Time & The Weird of the White Wolf - Michael Moorcock
Blood Music - Greg Bear

 

[dask]

Thrilling Wonder Stories February 1951 and Fantastic Adventures April 1951




Startling Stories November 1952 and July1950 respectively. Can't tell you what else is inside, not that I am feeble but my habit is to read these without looking at the table of contents. I don't want to know what's next or how long or short the story I'm reading is. SF mags this old are treasures that need to be savored.

 

[AE35Unit]

Edmund Hamilton and E.E. Doc Smith there Dask, nice!
I picked this up from bookmooch. Used to get it from my library years ago-now I have my own copy! Just need the time now...

 

[K. Riehl]

Picked up these two gems. Upgrades for the Astounding collection. February and July 1931.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Went to a used book store/coffeehouse in Maryville, Tennessee, and picked up a few things. Star Science Fiction Stories No. 3 edited by Frederic Pohl (1955; anthology of original stories; my copy is a 1972 paperback that just says Star 3 on the cover); Sign of the Labrys by Margaret St. Clair (1963; novel); The People Trap by Robert Sheckley (1968; collection), and Topper and Topper Takes a Trip) by Thorne Smith (1926 and 1932; novels) in 1980 paperback reprints.

 

[AE35Unit]

Another Alan Dean Foster freebie from bookmooch.com

 

[TheShadowsandSilence]

Dark Gods - T.E.D. Klein
The Imago Sequence and Other Stories - Laird Barron
The King in Yellow - Robert W. Chambers
Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary, Tales and Memoirs (Library of America)

Pre-ordered:

William Hope Hodgson: Centipede Press Library of Weird Fiction
Algernon Blackwood: Centipede Press Library of Weird Fiction

 

[Bick]

I managed to pick up a 1935 Methuen 1/- edition of Edgar Rice Burrough's The Gods of Mars (in very good nick despite being 79 years old). It is an early edition with the same artwork by Frank Schoonover from the 1918 1st ed. The artwork manages the neat trick of being both utterly awful and wonderful at the same time:

The book wasn't exactly cheap - I found it in a rare/collectible bookstore - but it counters the expense by being fantastic. I'm chuffed anyway. For those not in the know, this was the second of Burrough's John Carter/mars novels, originally serialised in 1913.

 

[Fried Egg]

Dark Gods - T.E.D. Klein
The Imago Sequence and Other Stories - Laird Barron
The King in Yellow - Robert W. Chambers
Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary, Tales and Memoirs (Library of America)

Pre-ordered:

William Hope Hodgson: Centipede Press Library of Weird Fiction
Algernon Blackwood: Centipede Press Library of Weird Fiction

That's a good haul...

 

[K. Riehl]

I found the Armed Services Editions of When Worlds Collide and Donovan's Brain on Ebay.

Picked up 6 Avon Fantasy Reader's at the local used paperback store. Here are two of them

 

[dask]

Picked up 6 Avon Fantasy Reader's at the local used paperback store. Here are two of them

Maybe the best purchase any of us will make all year.

 

[hitmouse]

Having a bit of a nostalgia fest, I picked up from ebay the March 1979 OMNI, which was the first SF magazine I ever bought, as a callow 12 year old, with my precious pocket money, from Sperrings in Bassett Green Road in Southampton in Spring 1979.
Big stuff in those pre-internet, 3 channels of black and white TV days.


One of the delights of looking at this again is the style, and the adverts (Maxell tapes! Datsun Cars!!, Sinclair Pocket TV!!!), which are now quaintly dated. There is a piece on a new idea called electronic mail, which was being used as an experiment by President Carter and VP Mondale.

At the time I re-read this so many times that I remembered quite clearly the layout of the pages. This edition included what I think is the first publication of Unaccompanied Sonata by Orson Scott Card. Made a real impression.

I have just located the full edition (and most of the others) on Project Gutenburg.Some fascinating stuff in here:
https://archive.org/details/omni-magazine-1979-03

 

[hitmouse]

Just pre-ordered this, and the album:

The blurb:

In 1792, John Evans, a twenty-two-year-old farmhand from Snowdonia, Wales, travelled to America to discover whether there was, as widely believed, a Welsh-speaking Native American tribe – The Madogwys - still walking the Great Plains.
During the course of an extraordinary adventure, Evans wrestled the largest river reptiles ever seen in the Mississippi, hunted bison with the Omaha tribe, defected to the Spanish in St.Louis, annexed North Dakota from the British, and created the map that guided Lewis and Clark on their legendary expedition.
In the summer of 2012, Gruff Rhys – himself a distant relative of Evans – retraced the explorer’s route through the heart of the continent by means of an ‘Investigative Concert Tour TM’ – a series of solo gigs accompanied by little more than an acoustic guitar, a PowerPoint presentation and a three-foot high felt avatar of John Evans.
Brilliantly documenting both men’s odysseys, AMERICAN INTERIOR explores how wild fantasies interact with hard history, and how myth-making can inspire humans to partake in crazy, vain pursuits of glory, including exploration, war and the creative arts.


Film trailer for the project:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=KHV_6H2hQnM#t=16