Book Hauls!

[AE35Unit]

Yesterday my partner got a couple of Star Trek books, one set in the TOS world and another featuring Riker as captain of the USS Titan, accompanied by Tuvok.

And today I got a copy of The Piano from bookmooch. Never seen the film and not sure its my thing but I'll give it a go!

 

[AE35Unit]

Got this today from bookmooch.com. its a tatty ex library but it seems its a rare edition. Google images doesnt pull up this cover neither does librarything or goodreads!

 

[Extollager]

Fagles' translation of Aeshylus's Orestiea (Penguin Classics). I'm reading around in Classical Greek literature (in translation) lately.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Went to some bookstores in and around Asheville, North Carolina. Among the items purchased, those of SF interest include Limbo by Bernard Wolfe, The Prometheus Man by Ray Nelson, and Zotz! by Walter Karig.

 

[Extollager]

Received Gods and Heroes, a compendium of Greek mythology by Schwab, in the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library:

Received a box of discards yesterday, for the most part books to give away to students, but I might keep an American Civil War-era volume that binds together Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White with his No Name (which I haven't read before) and also Tom Cringle's Log "by the author of The Cruise of The Midge." However, the print is really small. Maybe the book would be more fitting for younger eyes than mine... yeah.

 

[j d worthington]

but I might keep an American Civil War-era volume that binds together Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White with his No Name (which I haven't read before).

That must be one hefty volume, given that in the Oxford edition The Woman in White (novel only) is 588 pp., and No Name (ditto) is 741....

I don't quite know how you'll feel about No Name. Personally, I quite liked it, but I seem to be in the minority even among those who are fans of the man's work....

 

[Extollager]

That must be one hefty volume, given that in the Oxford edition The Woman in White (novel only) is 588 pp., and No Name (ditto) is 741....

The two Collins novels are printed in small type in double columns on each page, so The Woman's last page is 260 and No Name's is page 278! (Each of the novels is paginated separately; I don't think they were originally issued together in one volume. The book is roughly the thickness of my Lord of the Rings one-volume hardcover from about 1975.

However, I think the Collins-Cringle book is smaller and lighter. Its print is so small that I've decided to pass it to some younger reader!

If I were to try a Collins I haven't yet read, it would probably be Armadale rather than No Name. The only Collins novels I've read are Woman, Moonstone, and the short Haunted Hotel.

 

[Lilmizflashythang]

In May I was able to get two boxes of books for $70-ish. It took us a month to read them.

 

[Extollager]

Received Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and poet and novelist Richard Church's memoir The Voyage Home. I was particularly interested in church because he was a friend of Ruth Pitter. About this book, she said "that peculiarly rich book was a kind of revelation, strangely memorable among the welter of new impressions we have to live with. It was the Imago brusting forth -- the Larva, Nymph, and Pupa we knew already." Of Church's two earlier memoirs, Pitter wrote, "Surely your works are remembered and love by many. 'Over the Bridge' and "The Golden Sovereign,' particularly, are English classics to me, read and re-read." I have the earlier books on order.

 

[Extollager]

Richard Church's Over the Bridge and The Golden Sovereign arrived in the mail this afternoon. Over the Bridge was awarded the Sunday Times Prize for an outstanding work of literature. J. B. Priestley: "a true poet's re-creation of his childhood." Times: "vivid, packed withpeople, incident and movement, lighted by truth, and beautifully written," etc. Also received DiSanto and Steele's Guidebook to "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."

 

[JunkMonkey]

My Mum is slowly clearing the decks of my dad's old bookpiles (he died just over a year ago) and today presented me with a carrier bagful that was on its way to the charity shop if I didn't want them. Some of them turned out to be books I had lent my dad over the years - a few weren't. In addition to getting back my copy of Fred Pohl's The Day the Martians Came I got a copy of Heinlein's Starbeast, Silverberg's Nightwings, Spider Robinson's Mind Killer and the Ophiuchi Hotlineby John Varley. Thanks, Dad.

 

[dask]

The Amazing Stories is Vol. 1, No.1, America's first all sf mag and the Air Wonder Stories is Vol.1, No.2. Facsimiles of course, I ain't no billionaire, but I'm ecstatic to have them.

 

[JunkMonkey]

I would be too. I know they're a bit later but are you aware of the scanned copies of Amazing - and other SF magazines at archive.org?

https://archive.org/search.php?query=amazing%20stories

I'm just waiting for this lot to arrive in the post:


Haul by the_junk_monkey, on Flickr

 

[dask]

Thanks for the link. Nice looking haul too.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

The local library book sale led us to pick up a few items. Of SFF interest are Fiasco by Stanislaw Lem and the collection Skirmish by Clifford Simak.

 

[J-Sun]

I ain't no billionaire either but I finally scored this:

I really never buy "acceptable" books because I'm sometimes unhappy with "very good" ones and find most "good" ones un"acceptable" but this was "cheap" even for that and the only way I'd ever let myself get it. And, lo, it's okay by me. I don't care about it as a collector but as a reader: the spine is structurally perfect, the pages are almost perfectly clean, it's tight and square. The only problems are the missing dustjacket and what looks like a few small drops of splashed coffee and - probably mail damage - a couple of slightly scrunched corners on the tops of the end-boards. I've never owned a Gnome book before (and it is that and not the facsimile) and I'm amazed at the quality of the paper - really thick stock with no tanning and nobody's dogeared them or written in it.

 

[dask]

Great score! I can't figure out why someone just doesn't reprint this like all the other small press books like Lovecraft, etc. Or maybe make facsimiles of the original Astoundings.

 

[J-Sun]

Great score! I can't figure out why someone just doesn't reprint this like all the other small press books like Lovecraft, etc. Or maybe make facsimiles of the original Astoundings.

Really - I have de Camp's Divide and Rule in a Lancer paperback and it's about the same thing - a maybe novel and a novella ("The Stolen Dormouse") tacked together. And I paid a dime for it.

Cool haul on your part, too - like JunkMonkey notes, I have the scans which makes me plenty happy but I'd love to have them in paper. And cool haul for you, too, JunkMonkey.

 

[dask]

Anyone know if those little e-readers like Kindle have internet capability?
It'd be just about worth it to get one and rather than pay to download books from Amazon or wherever just access the scanning archive and read all that stuff for free. Like getting a whopping sf mag collection for the price of a tiny electronic device. Gotta be a flaw somewhere.

 

[J-Sun]

Anyone know if those little e-readers like Kindle have internet capability?
It'd be just about worth it to get one and rather than pay to download books from Amazon or wherever just access the scanning archive and read all that stuff for free. Like getting a whopping sf mag collection for the price of a tiny electronic device. Gotta be a flaw somewhere.

No, I don't know about the e-readers. I mean, I know they have "internet access" but I don't know if that's just a restricted pipe to their store or if it's a generally browsable internet. But I absolutely do not pay to download from Amazon because they encrypt their books so that you can't read them on any other device and register them to your account so you can't transfer them and so on. It's just paying to rent a bunch of pixels they make as inconvenient and evil as possible. As far as the scans of those mags, those are just free, unencrypted PDFs (or djvu or txt or whatever others are offered) that you can read on anything from desktop to laptop to weird gizmo.

(Amazon does offer the Padgett stories separately for 4 or 6 or some bucks apiece and, despite my dislike of reading fiction on-screen, I might have gotten them but the encryption is a deal breaker - I waited until I could happily pay more for a real book.)

This never happens to real book readers :