Book Hauls!

[dask]

Definitely on my radar. Good catch.

 

[Vince W]

Love that cover Extollager!

 

[J-Sun]

If you can spend three bucks in a better way you live on an alternate earth many times removed.

Come to think of it, I think you're right.

Indeed

You should read the G. McDonald Wallis straight away - I imagine it would put you within a very select group of SF fans. Moreover, if anyone ever comes onto book search and asks what a certain book title is and you know its "Legend of Lost Earth", you'd get about a gazillion kudos points.

(I like the look of the Calvin Knox too).

Hadn't thought of that, but I suppose that's true too. I'd have gotten the van Vogt regardless of what was on the other side but it being "Knox" was extra nice.

Got an old Ace paperback meself today in the mail:

Only read two in that - the del Rey was okay and the Weinbaum was very cool. I imagine the Brackett is excellent and would be interested in the other two for variety - good pickup!

 

[Extollager]

25c was the cover price for Wollheim's Ace anthology The End of the World:

 

[J-Sun]

I don't recognize a couple of the stories in there, but the rest look good, even if it's not my theme. Did you actually pay the cover price? Because that would be a pretty good deal.

 

[Extollager]

Did you actually pay the cover price?

Sure did (plus about $7.25 more)!

 

[Vince W]

Found a book I'd been trying to remember the title of for ages:

Also:

 

[Bick]

Speaking of Edmund Crispin, I picked up both of these for $4 combined! Bargain

 

[J-Sun]

Sure did (plus about $7.25 more)!

I walked into that one. I hope you appreciate that book as much as it did.

Among the books (and a CD and DVD) I got today, the ones of SF interest were

Oddly, Karl Schroeder has co-written The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction with Cory Doctorow which is (I guess - haven't read it) the same kind of book as the de Camp. Schroeder was 4 bucks amidst the bricks and mortar and the de Camp was 3.47 out of the magic mailbox. An example of the other stuff is a collection of critical essays on Marlowe.

 

[J-Sun]

If you can spend three bucks in a better way you live on an alternate earth many times removed.

Off-topic for the thread, sorry, but on the topic of the quote: a thread of Extollager's coincidentally reminded me that, once upon a time, I actually got Boucher's A Treasury of Great Science Fiction Volumes One and Two for two bucks - don't know what I did with the third buck but, if I spent it well, that would also be in the running.

 

[Extollager]

Just an update for anyone who remembers me posting, May of last year, about my find of 16 sf and fantasy books in a recycle dumpster. The odor disappeared. The books are free or virtually free of that unpleasant mustiness. Now, if they smell, it seems it's just the familiar smell of old paperbacks.

Here's an account of the finding written at the time:

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. Those tossed --, 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

These were all from the Sixties and early Seventies.

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

However: what I've held back is that these books, or most of them have an unpleasant odor. I can't place it. At first I thought of urine, but I'm not sure that hits it exactly. Some of the books I took -- maybe 40 in all -- have been chewed. I'm thinking they may smell of mouse or rat. They may well have come from a farm; some of the books were about farming and there were old issues of The Farm magazine (which seems to have been a family mag aimed at farm families, to judge by my glimpse of covers). So were these books stored in some outbuilding where the mice got in? I'm thinking maybe Lysol will at least mask the odor, if I keep them. In the meantime they have a little shelf off all by themselves in my workshop "library."

 

[dask]

The Farmer and the Ellison seem to be particularly good finds. Way to go. Finding those books the way you did reminds me of some of the comic dreams I used to have where I'd be in the used bookstore and find a big stack of comics I'd been looking for. Then wake up all bummed out. If it's too good to be true it's probably a dream.

 

[Extollager]

Finding those books the way you did reminds me of some of the comic dreams I used to have where I'd be in the used bookstore and find a big stack of comics I'd been looking for.

Been there, done that. As a young fellow I dreamt of finding an early issue of Fantastic Four with a beautifully-colored cover. Actually, in my case it probably wasn't a used book store, but rather a second hand/junk store, called H & H Furniture Company, at 785 S. Broadway in Coos Bay, Oregon. The business and perhaps the building itself are gone now. If the scene wasn't H & H, it would have been one of the other such stores in southern Oregon, which were fairly plentiful in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

 

[dask]

Freebie from the library:

More roughed up than beat up this is still in very readable condition with an impressive line-up of the usual suspects. What I don't like, however, regardless of condition, is when the last page of a book is a story page. I prefer a blank page (flyleaf?) or an ad of some kind because even if the last sentence is complete, period and all, you can never be sure a page hasn't been torn out for who knows what bizarre reason. This is especially true in this case when the back cover is completely detached from the spine. The last page of this book (the story is "Who Knows?" by Guy de Maupassant) is a full page and ends with a complete sentence, but is it really the last page? Inspecting the inmost edge with my reading glasses I cannot detect any trace of a removed page so it probably is but until I can locate the story in another collection I'll never know for sure. Because, lacking evidence, who knows?

 

[j d worthington]

More roughed up than beat up this is still in very readable condition with an impressive line-up of the usual suspects. What I don't like, however, regardless of condition, is when the last page of a book is a story page. I prefer a blank page (flyleaf?) or an ad of some kind because even if the last sentence is complete, period and all, you can never be sure a page hasn't been torn out for who knows what bizarre reason. This is especially true in this case when the back cover is completely detached from the spine. The last page of this book (the story is "Who Knows?" by Guy de Maupassant) is a full page and ends with a complete sentence, but is it really the last page? Inspecting the inmost edge with my reading glasses I cannot detect any trace of a removed page so it probably is but until I can locate the story in another collection I'll never know for sure. Because, lacking evidence, who knows?

Dask: PM me with the text....

Thanks to Wilum Pugmire, I just received a package containing the following:

The Centipede Press edition of M. G. Lewis' The Monk:

http://centipedepress.com/gothics/themonk.html

The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft, ed. and ann. by Leslie Klinger:

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/sources/nahpl.aspx

Adept's Gambit, the original version, by Fritz Leiber:

http://miskatonicbooks.wordpress.com/tag/arcane-wisdom-press/

Ana Kai Tangata, by Scott Nicolay

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1878252089/?tag=brite-21

and, by Wilum himself:

Jester of Yellow Day (chapbook)

and The Revenant of Rebecca Pascal (with David Barker):

http://hellnotes.com/the-revenant-of-rebecca-pascal-book-review

 

[Randy M.]

J.D., you get much better mail than I do.

I'm especially envious of the Leiber. I have yet to read "Adepts Gambit" -- have I ever mentioned I'm about 30 years behind in my reading? -- but I'd love to get my hands on that version to compare to the one eventually published.


Randy M.

 

[j d worthington]

J.D., you get much better mail than I do.

I'm especially envious of the Leiber. I have yet to read "Adepts Gambit" -- have I ever mentioned I'm about 30 years behind in my reading? -- but I'd love to get my hands on that version to compare to the one eventually published.


Randy M.

Well, my mail isn't usually so... extravagant. Something like this is definitely beyond my current means (and, I suspect, more than Wilum could really afford), but very much appreciated.

As for the Leiber... it's a shortish novella, so wouldn't take long to read; I plan on including it in my October reading once I finish Cabell's "Biography of the Life of Manuel" (only the final volume to go); I've read the standard version several times, so I'm curious to see how this differs, as well. I think, if you've not read any of the Fafhrd/Grey Mouser stories, you're likely to be quite taken with a number of them....

 

[dask]

Dask: PM me with the text....[/QUOTE]

My sincere thanks. J.D. checked and the story (and therefore book) is complete. Gonna read it next I think.

 

[VALIS13]

Found a book I'd been trying to remember the title of for ages:

It's Jackie Chan!

 

[Maximillian]

The Complete Amber Reader (all 6 Amber books together in one volume) by Roger Zelazny.

I'm going to get on my Elite Nerdist Seahorse =} here and state that if the name Zelazny does not immediately pop for you, you need to go and read the late Zelazny's books. Its kind of my personal test to separate the Nerds from the True Nerds. If I meet a self-confessed "Nerd" and he never heard of Zelazny...I'll still drink with him...but he's buying. =}