Here I Am, Take Me or Leave Me !

When the old Polish bookseller in Boston approached my father about "teaching the boy the book trade, because he's kind of smart," I was thrilled. I would no longer have to ask for an advance on my weekly one-dollar allowance to buy my Earl Derr Biggers' "good Chinaman" books or my Sax Rohmer "heathen Chinee" reading matter. What did I know ? I was thirteen years old, learning a trade, and getting paid in books. And all I had to do was work at learning about books. My mother and uncle were hand bookbinders, my dad a hand compositor, and I had learned to run a letter press at age nine, so at least the smells were familiar, and pleasant. I didn't know then about the duck bread. The first day on the job - a Monday after school - I went to Tony's book store and received five dollars. In change. My instructions were clear and simple: "This money is for books and car fare. Bring me back three feet of good history by Friday night, and walk as much as you can. Go to the junk shops and churches. Look for books. Don't argue about price. We'll work a little when you get here on Friday." With a few improvements, that's been my life for the last fifty years.

We Can No Longer Recommend First's Magazine

First's Magazine has been having problems with their guest authors for some time now, and I've generally ignored them. However, the errors contained in this month's issue are so egregious that I am compelled to advise against subscribing, reading, or recommending the magazine any more.  Greyhound's Books has been advertising in the magazine for quite some time, but will do so no longer. An article by an individual named Evan Klein is extremely poorly  researched and misleading as he  feebly attempts to provide values of the science fiction Hugo Award winners. Below are some examples, with 3 prices from reputable dealers, and Klein's guesses:

A Link You Might Have Been Missing

 Gee, there are other good blogs out there !

www.themysteriousbookshop.blogspot.com

A Book for All Places, or A Place in a Book

I was reading Nicholas Basbanes’ Every Book Its Reader, and came across a term I’d never heard of before:  Commonplace Book. Thence this bit of information that you might find to be of worth, and worthwhile doing for yourself.

You can’t tell a book by its cover, but maybe the title would help - or not !

You may not be able to find these in the Valley's bookstores, but you might, so here are reasonable RETAIL prices for these most interesting titles. Christmas gifts, anyone ?

Warfare in the Enemy’s Rear  O. Heilbrunn 1963  $ 20.00  -  $ 40.00
Selected Themes and Icons from Spanish Literature: Of Beards, Shoes, Cucumbers, and Leprosy 
            John Burt  1982     $ 200.00  -  $ 250.00
 What do Bunnies Do All Day ?  J. Mastrangelo 1988   $ 2.00  -  $ 8.00
 The Romance of Proctology  C. Blanton  1938   $ 200.00  -  $ 250.00
 How to Become a Schizophrenic  J. Modrow  1992  $ 20.00  -  $ 30.00
 Teach Yourself Alcoholism  M. Glatt  1975  $ 30.00  -  $ 50.00  (Paperback)
 Nasology; or Hints towards  a Classification of Noses  E. Warwick  1848 
        $ 200.00  -  $ 250.00
 Not Worth Reading  G. Arthur  1938  $ 40.00  -  $ 100.00

Book Facts From History

Homer’s Odyssey contained the earliest instance of a plot flashback.
Xu Shen’s Explaining Words, Analyzing Characters - 100 A.D. - is the first dictionary.
Harn Darn Jun’s Forest of Jokes  - 200 A.D.. - is the first joke book.
The Memoirs of Aratus of Sicyon - 213 B.C. - is the first autobiography.
The longest word that The Bard ever used is: honoroficabilitudinitatibus.

Timelines are always fun !

- October1809  Diedrich Knickerbocker disappears in New York.

One Lump or Two ?

The Grand Vizier of Persia spent a lot of time on the road, or the sand, if you will. He traveled with his 117,000 volume library, and kept it properly organized by training his camels to walk in alphabetical order ! Try that with cats, if you will.

Mysteries solved !

Erle Stanley Gardner learned quite a bit about writing from his reading of “The Youth’s Companion,” a magazine published in the 1930s, by Perry Mason & Company.

Robert B. Parker, author of innumerable mediocre mysteries about Boston PI Spenser pictured his main character as a tough guy who is a knight in shining armor, and named him after the poet Edmund Spenser.

Mickey Spillane, whose wives' charms - read ass- appear on the jackets of many of his books, drew a comic strip featuring detective Mike Danger, that no publisher was interested in. He decided to write a novel, and changed Mike’s surname to Hammer, after Hammer’s Bar and Grille, one of Spillane’s hangouts.

Arthur Conan Doyle, after christening Mr. Holmes as Sherringford, re- baptized him as Sherlock, after a famous violinist of the time, Alfred Sherlock, thence the pervasive droning violin.

John D. MacDonald started writing the wimpy Travis McGee - oops, that’s Dallas McGee,  novels in 1962. Before Dallas appeared in print, President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, and Dallas became Travis, perhaps unwittingly maintaining the Texas connection.

For the Mathematician

If there are ten books on a bookshelf, they can be arranged in 3,628,800 different ways.
If we still lived on the East Coast, it would give us something to do during the winter.

I Still Love Lists

To follow up on the Random House/Modern Library article, I thought you might like to see another list - known as "opposing views from questionable spokesmen & women." On July 21, 1998, the Radcliffe College Publishing Course compiled and released its own list of the century's top 100 novels, at the request of the Modern Library editorial board. Notice the politically correct nature of some of the choices:

The Wonders of Blogging

I know I get a weeeeee bit long-winded, or electroned, so, I've just modified the blog to put in a break,

I LOVE Lists

Random House, publisher of the Modern Library series of books stirred the book business pot in 1998 by making a list of the top 100 books of the 20th Century. After the "100 Best" story first broke in The New York Times on Monday, July 20, 1998, all kinds of opinions about the list - and theories about the Modern Library's purpose in concocting such a contest of sorts - emerged. According to Random House, the goal of the "100 Best" project was to get people talking about great books. And they succeeded beyond their wildest imaginings -- more than 400,000 avid readers rushed online to cast votes for their favorite books and the students of the Radcliffe Publishing Course quickly responded with a rival list.

Random House also conducted two other polls - one for best non-fiction published in the English language since 1900, with a total of 194,829 votes cast. The readers' poll for the best novels published in the English language since 1900 had 217,520 votes cast. I love lists, especially when they provide great hints for great reading. Here's the Random House lists:

Some Bestsellers Aren't So Bad

Being a bestselling book doesn't mean that the book is worthwhile. Since the World started in 1943, when I was born, I though that you might like to see what sold in that most fateful of decades. Some of them are still really good reads. Enjoy !

Cheap Reads Worth Having

Many of our customers want to have a library of worthwhile books that look good too. If you're on a strict budget and a literature reader, we would suggest to you the Reader's Digest -insert a very loud scream here - "The World's Best Reading" series. These are serious literature, not abridged, have credible translations of foreign literature, and extremely high production values - colorful, excellent bindings and illustrations - plus they include a four page biographical insert on the author. They're built to last, and considering the books' quality, could even become heirlooms. And, they're quite reasonably priced on the used market.

Gastronomy is not "Rumbly in the Tummy"

Even though Winnie the Pooh might say so. One of our colleagues is also a Chef - a real chef, not just a cook. Another of our colleagues has the best selection of cookbooks in Las Vegas, but we're running hard after her, and gaining. When we put our snob suits on, we refer to cooking books as "Books on Gastronomy."
I'm a plain, home cook, and very much enjoy reading, as do all other cookbook collectors, cookbooks. There are two wonderful magazine hardbound annual editions that are just the thing for those of us who don't like their food to look like somebody put their fingers all over the minute portions of whatever current weird veggie disguised under an Italian version of its name, or some strange fish name that most of us know as tuna fish. We recommend:

The Taste of Home annuals, and
The Cook's Illustrated annuals

if you cook like me. If not, we still recommend them. Buon Appetito !

Absolutely Amazing Technique - and Writing

Why would I evidence ANY interest at all in a current mystery author, especially one who writes noir, or hard-boiled mysteries ? Because Charlie Huston has a great hook: the way he writes dialog. No “Jack said,” “Mary responded,”, no he-said-she-said. He uses long dashes, not “-” or “--” but ¼ inch or 3/8 inch dashes. And it works, dammit. All prices below are for fine condition first editions in fine condition dust jackets, as available. However, I expect that one of the major book clubs will publish a 3-in-1 fairly soon, and this should be the first hardbound edition, thus.

Phil the Idiot & Another Idiot !

I do buy books for my collections, upon occasion, off the Internet. The Internet Idiot below listed a book I wanted, so I tried to buy the book below:
Ghost Brigades First
Edition. Hard Cover. New/As New.

The book arrived, and it was not right.

Here’s the e-mail exchange that I had to go through:

Internet Idiots - One of Many

We do not sell on line - I'm too lazy, like the education customers give us, and want our clients to be able to handle the books before they buy them. There are, unfortunately, a large number of idiots out there on the Internet who are selling books, but not necessarily the ones they advertise for sale. Which of these dealers would you buy from ?

The Internet Idiots.
Which dealer would you buy from ?