Book Hauls!

[dask]

A couple of fantastic adventures I encountered while lost in the jungles of Amazon.com:

 

[hitmouse]

I only have one Blake and Mortimer in my small but rapidly expanding 'Teach Myself French by Reading Comic Books' pile: Le Piege Diabolique. It's probably the most talky comic I've ever read. On one page (36) a character delivers great slabs of monologue that take up most of the page. More words over 6 panels than the average modern Marvel comic delivers in twenty pages. Are they all like that?

Learning French by reading comics has a long and distinguished history. Well, it does for me. Leave B&M for later. Read, in the original French: Tintin, Asterix, and Moebius ( I bought the whole Monde d'Edena in French, amongst others.)

 

[JunkMonkey]

Last night , halfway through the Tintin book, L'ile Noir, I came across a character who cried "Malediction!" ("Curses!") and it occurred to me that, as this book was written in 1946, I'm probably learning to speak some really old-fashioned French like someone learning English by reading Eagle era Dan Dare, or Biggles books. I say, old chap!

 

[hitmouse]

What is blistering barnacles in French?

 

[Menadue]

Re: Most Recent Buys

I most recently bought a copy of the exceedingly rare New Worlds #166 (published in September 1966), which contains the first version of The Atrocity Exhibition by JG Ballard and Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock.

This is for my PhD thesis on people's experiences and relationship with Science Fiction - if you are interested in sharing your recent reading and how you relate to SF in general, please do my online survey - there's a link to it from my thesis facebook page: ScienceFictionsCultualFacts if people would like to answer it - it's a Google Forms survey and is quite short.
This looked like an excellent forum to approach for people's interests!
Thanks
Ben

 

[Vince W]

Perhaps put a link to it here for those of us that don't use Facebook. And welcome to the Chrons Menadue.

 

[Menadue]

Perhaps put a link to it here for those of us that don't use Facebook. And welcome to the Chrons Menadue.

Hi Vince W, thanks for the welcome - and the suggestion. I tried to do this first time around but got a message that I'm not a sufficiently advanced member of the forum to put up an actual 'link', so I only put up the FB page. I was being a bit dim though, as trying again I have found that by adding a space after the http: I could post it after all: http: //goo.gl/forms/4q0tIxjR2x

 

[Extollager]

Recent acquisitions include Eugene Vodolazkin's Laurus, about which I've started a thread at the Literary Fiction subforum, and the Penguin Classics edition of The Greek Alexander Romance, after references in Laurus got me interested in it.

LAURUS, by Eugene Vodolazkin, English translation 2015

Plenty to read and plenty of appetite for reading. Someone had a thread called "Reading Lull," and I thought of reading Raymond Lull, the Franciscan mathematician.

 

[Vince W]

Just received Napoleon the Great by Andrew Roberts and Waterloo by Bernard Cornwell. Really looking forward to diving into these straight away.

 

[dask]

Went to the library book sale today and found this:

Really good shape for .50¢. Lots of good stuff, "The Hills Of The Dead" by Robert E. Howard, "The Shunned House" by H. P. Lovecraft, but wanted it mostly for Hugh B. Cave's 1933 "Murgunstrumm."

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Went to a new used book/comic book/video game/CD/DVD place recently, and got a copy of Some Will Not Die by Algis Budrys. Apparently this novel has a complex history. At least part of it is based on at least one short story. ("Ironclad," Galaxy, March 1954.) Maybe other stories were reworked into it as well. In any case, the first version of the full novel was published in an abridged form as False Night in 1954. The full original version appeared under the present title in 1961. It was then revised and expanded for the 1978 "trade paperback" reprint. My edition is a 1979 paperback.

Link to cover image:

http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/0/03/SMWLLNTD1979.jpg

 

[K. Riehl]

Picked up this beauty for about 10% of what it is normally priced at.

 

[dask]

Also picked up Battles And Leaders Of The Civil War edited by Ned Bradford, a 1956 hardback without dust jacket, also for .50¢. A history of the Civil War told "principally by the men who fought it."

 

[dask]

Went Christmas shopping for my wife and found something for myself instead. I was classy enough not to mention it to her:

 

[Elvraie]

All of that Chaos Magic should make an interesting, as well as an unchristmassy read, Dask. A rare find, methink.

 

[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.

I like the picture below. Anybody else find it appealing?

 

[dask]

Yeah, but it looks suspiciously as if he's checking his iPhone.

 

[Elvraie]

I like the picture below. Anybody else find it appealing?
View attachment 26575

It looks a bit like the British Library.The set up with the old lamps and wooden desk reminds me of the Old Bodleian in Oxford, too.

 

[Extollager]

I don't remember where I found the photo of the guy with the directories, and don't think I ever knew where the photo was taken.

 

[hitmouse]

I am trying to track down a copy of this Welsh apocalyptic SF novel, Y Dydd Olaf (The Last Day) published in about 1976. Welsh language SF is a bit of a minority sport, with Welsh language novel print runs typically <1000. Would be very interested to know if anyone has read this.

My interest was sparked by an eponymous Welsh pop album released this year, which deals with soem of the material in the book. The music sounds pretty good, in a retro synthi-pop way, even if you do not speak Welsh: