Book Hauls!

[J-Sun]

If you comment, could you do so at the thread on Groff Conklin's anthologies, in the Classic SF and Fantasy zone?

Well, I usually post stuff like that in Reviews if I go long or on The Short Story Thread otherwise. But I often do an abridgement on The Short Story Thread even if it is in Reviews. I'll be sure to at least drop a note in the Conklin thread but, like I say, it may be awhile. Thanks for raising the idea though - maybe there's more give-and-take in the Conklin thread. While there are some discussions in the Reviews threads it does seem like zero-reply and single-digit threads are much more common, like some people think maybe you're not supposed to reply there or something.

 

[Extollager]

I'm afraid there hasn't been much posting (other than mine) in the Conklin thread, but surely with so many people who are a lot more deeply read in classic sf than I am, there could be! Hope to see it.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Went to an outdoor library book sale yesterday, which also had live music, a food truck, flowers for sale, and gourmet popsicles. Wound up with four biographies: Che Guevera (The Motorcycle Diaries), Charles Schultz of Peanuts fame, Native American activist Russell Means, and 1950's professional wrestler Gorgeous George (the Liberace of wrestling.)

 

[JunkMonkey]

Gorgeous George (the Liberace of wrestling.)

When I woke up this morning I never thought I would be going to bed with the phrase "The Liberace of Wrestling" lodged in my head. What a concept! Thanks for that....

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I've had some nice additions to the sff bookcase this month - I got a nice signed first of Joe Abercrombie's Half a King. I also picked up Peter Hamilton's Great North Road for a pound in Tesco's, although I'm looking at it with trepidation. Tis very big...

 

[Randy M.]

Picked this up the end of last week. Interesting contents,
Publication Listing

I'm thinking October might be just the time to dip into it.


Randy M.

 

[Bick]

I managed to pick up a few classics in a used book store in Queenstown. These are in fine condition with excellent tight spines and no creasing to mention (which matters to be me, being an obsessive collecting sort of geek):

 

[The Bluestocking]

Woohoo! I picked up Cassandra Clare's Clockwork Prince for GBP1.50 from my local bookshop's bargain shelf! Woohoo!

 

[hitmouse]

@Bick: I have had the set of the Panther EE Smith books. Lovely editions which I have had since childhood.

Just purchased The Selected Works of T.S.Spivet for my son. It looks like an interesting read, but more to the point, he is a big fan of the movies Amelie and Delicatessen, and there is a new film of this book made by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who made the the two earlier films.

 

[K. Riehl]

Picked up Astounding Stories of Super Science April and June 1930, Galactic Derelict by Andre Norton in hardcover 1st, Amberzine (2,3 and12-15), Armed Services Edition of War of the Worlds. A good month for the collection.

 

[BelgarionOz]

Well I bought Druid's Sword by Sara Douglass the other day (which she had signed for somebody. Me I guess now). But slightly more interestingly I picked up a book about the history of maps that featured all the weird and wonderful lands that people thought existed, but never did. As well as a book with lots of drawings about the construction of Atlantis, based on what Plato wrote in his two volumes on the subject. He tempered that with his own knowledge of architecture and engineering etc.

 

[Vince W]

Picked up The Eighty Minute Hour by Brain Aldiss and Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan.

Uncovered them from heap of random books in a second hand bookshop.

 

[Bick]

Those books are great finds, Vince. But why has the head of the dead astronaut (though not the body, judging by the outline of the suit) been reduced to a skull on a seemingly lifeless planet ?

 

[Vince W]

I would imagine the artist was trying to convey a dead man in a spacesuit where there shouldn't be one. Published in the 70's I'm sure the artist was told 'put a dead man in a space suit' and that's what he thought of. A mummified body would just never occur to the artist. It should have looked more like something described in the end of Iain Banks' story Descendant.

 

[Extollager]

Received my order of Asimov's I, Robot and The Stars, Like Dust in paperback editions I remember from 40 years or so ago. That's a pleasant way for me to read Asimov. More are on the way. You can get these books for less than they'd cost new and with an added back-in-the-day flavor.

 

[Vince W]

For older books I like the ones I grew up with better than the new ones they put on today. I don't know why but I just seem to enjoy the book more with the old covers.

 

[Extollager]

For older books I like the ones I grew up with better than the new ones they put on today. I don't know why but I just seem to enjoy the book more with the old covers.

Similarly, it seems classical music listeners often prefer the recording in which they first heard a work they've come to cherish. I know I've heard several recordings of Sibelius's weird masterpiece Tapiola, but I like best the first one I owned (Karajan on EMI; and I would contend my fondness for it is not just because it's the recording by which I first got to know this piece well...).

But with regard to cover art, I really don't think preference is always a just matter of happy old associations. Take the Ballantine Tolkien covers. Here's Barbara Remington:

Now here's Darrell Sweet:

In this and other cover art, you get what seems to me a rather flat-footed realism that lacks the evocative quality of the Remington art.

 

[Bick]

Received my order of Asimov's I, Robot and The Stars, Like Dust in paperback editions I remember from 40 years or so ago. That's a pleasant way for me to read Asimov. More are on the way. You can get these books for less than they'd cost new and with an added back-in-the-day flavor.

Great. I agree, it's nice to own and read the editions you recall from way back when. I restocked my shelves with Asimovs a few years back (having lost the originals somewhere along the way), and managed to pick up many in the early 1980's Panther UK editions, which look great. They tend to have completely irrelevant, but excellent, Chris Foss cover art.

 

[dask]

In BREAKFAST IN THE RUINS, his personal account of the bottom-feeding world of publishing, Barry Malzberg (whose Mike Barry pseudonym is based on his reversed initials) talks about the Lone Wolf series he created with a hero (or anti-hero) who gets progressively more violent and self-destructive in his one man war against crime with each successive installment until the last one where he goes completely bonkers. Should be fun.

 

[dask]

The Bromfield may contain an element of the supernatural, the Sheckley will no doubt be naturally super, and Mr. Swanwick, after reading two of your stories, please take a bow while I yell wow!