Book Hauls!

[Rodders]

Alistair Reynolds Elysian Fire.

Can’t wait to get back into the Revelation Space universe.

 

[dask]

Found this little treasure at Value Village today. "Here, the first time in paperback, is the first of the original Lone Ranger stories, originally published in hardcover in 1938 and based on the famous radio series." High hopes for this one.

 

[Bick]

In the mail today I received a copy of Bradshaw's Illustrated Handbook to London and its Environs (1862):

Looks terrific. An 1862 tourist guide to London, describing the sights and sounds of London in mid-Victorian times, the year after publication is serial form of Great Expectations (to place it in time; they are not connected). Bradshaw likes to edify the traveler with dimensions and costs of things. The Buckingham Palace metal gates cost 3000 guineas; the throne room is sixty four feet in length, etc. Lovely old impressions abound - "Paddington was, until a few years back, a rural village, with a few old houses on each side of the Edgware Road..." And if you have a burning desire to know more about, oh let's say Richmond Bridge, this is the book for you. How many arches does it have? (five), how wide is the central span? (60 feet), when was the first stone laid? (1774 apparently) and when was it completed? (1777). How much did that all cost then? (26,000 British pounds, sir). This level of detail on almost every large house, statue, garden, bridge or public building in all of London. Now that's a tourist guide - super stuff!

 

[Extollager]

Is that a facsimile, Bick? What an interesting book, a real time capsule.

Looks like archive.org has some Continental Bradshaws available...

https://archive.org/search.php?query=bradshaw's hand book

 

[Extollager]

Here's a railways guide from 1840:

Osborne's London and Birmingham Railway guide. Illustrated : Osborne, Edward Cornelius : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

 

[Extollager]

Today the mail brought some books:

Dorothy L. Sayers -- Four Sacred Plays

Gerald Brenan -- South from Grenada, which in a later packaging than that pictured below was an entry in the Penguin Travel Library

A 2-volume edition of George Eliot's Middlemarch in a later Everyman's Library style, not the version I like with the ornate spine, etc.; this replaces by Riverside paperback, which fell apart and will be recycled.

And a collection of stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

The Sayers I had to pay for, but the others were free for the cost of shipping -- along with a bunch I will give away -- from a Philadelphia pal.

 

[Grimward]

Nothing quite so off the beaten path as the preceding bunch, but picked up fellow IC Alum Kristen Britain's 2nd in the Green Rider series, First Rider's Call. Seeing as how I read the first book, Green Rider, not long after it came out, I'm just a bit behind...

Also grabbed book 1 of Terry Brook's Dark Legacy series, The Wards of Faerie. Both of these came from the annual used book sale benefiting Grimlet the Younger's High School. This is the 8th year running I've landed something from that sale, and probably the final time as the parent of a student in the school (the Elder graduates from college this May, with the Younger graduating from high school shortly thereafter). Needless to say, I'll continue to patronize the sale, but as I've always brought my kids as students, it won't quite be the same...

 

[dask]

In the mail today I received a copy of Bradshaw's Illustrated Handbook to London and its Environs (1862):

Looks terrific. An 1862 tourist guide to London, describing the sights and sounds of London in mid-Victorian times, the year after publication is serial form of Great Expectations (to place it in time; they are not connected). Bradshaw likes to edify the traveler with dimensions and costs of things. The Buckingham Palace metal gates cost 3000 guineas; the throne room is sixty four feet in length, etc. Lovely old impressions abound - "Paddington was, until a few years back, a rural village, with a few old houses on each side of the Edgware Road..." And if you have a burning desire to know more about, oh let's say Richmond Bridge, this is the book for you. How many arches does it have? (five), how wide is the central span? (60 feet), when was the first stone laid? (1774 apparently) and when was it completed? (1777). How much did that all cost then? (26,000 British pounds, sir). This level of detail on almost every large house, statue, garden, bridge or public building in all of London. Now that's a tourist guide - super stuff!

This reminds me of a book I bought a few years ago, New York By Sunlight And Gaslight by James Dabney McCabe, published in the 1880s. Very interesting almost but not quite tourist guide to New York with very little political correctness. Unabashedly McCabe reveals the true problem behind Tammany Hall corruption: the Irish. That's what he said. (No shooting of the messenger, please!)

 

[Bick]

Is that a facsimile, Bick? What an interesting book, a real time capsule.

Yes - it's a reproduction of the original hardback. Its nicely done - I believe the publishers offer Bradshaw's Railway Guides also.

 

[Hugh]

Tom Gauld on the archaeology of the book tower – cartoon

There may be a certain truth in the above cartoon. It even makes me laugh. But it does not convey the sheer pleasure to be found in acquiring books and knowing that they are on the bookshelf...

 

[dask]

That's my nightstand! How'd you get that!

 

[Extollager]

Maybe we should have a complementary thread to this one, for stories of book reductions. It wouldn't get as many postings, but there'd be some stories of interest, I'm sure. I've given away hundreds in the past few years. My 1989 Britannicas are looking at me nervously.

 

[dask]

My 1959 and 1970 sets will follow me into assisted living. Too cool to toss.

 

[Extollager]

I would like to keep the Britannicas. This encyclopedia (I don't mean just the 1989 edition) was, surely, one of the noblest efforts of modern civilization. But space has become tight. Books I used to store in unheated, uninsulated places on my property have not protected some of my clothbound books from mold or mildew. So while I have brought more books into the house for this reason, I have also gone on acquiring books. It seems some things need to go elsewhere, and I may have a taker for the encyclopedias.

There are other things I am thinking about bidding farewell to. I saved 30 years' worth of the Times Literary Supplement in 2010 or 2011 when the university library made its first, huge removal of its serials (which was followed by later discardings). Maybe I will save a few and recycle the rest, since I have big plastic tubs of them, but rarely look at them, and could use the space. There's a box of New York Review of Books issues from the 1960s-70s. That could go, though they are interesting as time capsules (the things people were struggling with sometimes make our current overheated quarrels look pretty trivial by comparison).

I could get rid of all of these things and still have over 4000 books.

 

[Extollager]

That Britannica set has found a new home, with my son. Nice for him, and nice for me in opening up two shelves. I should be able to get some of these books off the floor or otherwise better stored.

 

[Extollager]

One may write tales of book unhauls here:

Tales of Book Purges, Culls, Weeding, etc.

 

[Allegra]

Tom Gauld on the archaeology of the book tower – cartoon

There may be a certain truth in the above cartoon. It even makes me laugh. But it does not convey the sheer pleasure to be found in acquiring books and knowing that they are on the bookshelf...

In my case it is certainly true. For a while I've been giving out bags of unread books left and right - mostly from lower & middle layers as the base layers have to serve the structural role, some to the animal charity shops some to friends whom I know would enjoy them. In the meanwhile upper layers downgrade regularly.

 

[K. Riehl]

Some recent pickups.

 

[zeze]

I went a little crazy the other day at my favorite used bookstore and ended up with 21 books. Most are Edgar Rice Burroughs (I've developed an addiction), but with other classic SFF thrown in:

By ERB:
A Princess of Mars
The Gods of Mars
The Warlord of Mars
Thuvia, Maid of Mars
The Chessmen of Mars
The Master Mind of Mars
A Fighting Man of Mars
Swords of Mars
Synthetic Men of Mars
Llana of Gathol
Escape on Venus
The Wizard of Venus
At the Earth's Core

"Empire of the East" by Fred Saberhagen
"The Veils of Azlaroc" by Fred Saberhagen
"The House on the Borderland" by William Hope Hodgson
"Silverlock" by John Myers Myers
"The Dark World" by Henry Kuttner
"The Broken Sword" by Poul Anderson
"The Ship of Ishtar" by A. Merritt

I reckon this will last me at least three months with some other books on my shelf sprinkled in. My consumption of books is similar to binge drinking.

 

[dask]

Super haul, super store.