PS Publishing had a sale, and I picked up three limited editions of things I already had the trade editions of.
Bradbury, Ray. Greentown Tinseltown. PS Publishing, 2012. First edition hardback, #29 of 50 copies signed by editor Donn Albright, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket and decorated boards. Trade state lacks the dust jacket and limitation page.
Lansdale, Joe R. Edge of Dark Water. PS Publishing, 2012. First edition hardback, #221 of 300 signed copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket and decorated boards and a Near Fine slipcase with a 1″ indention.
Lansdale, Joe R. Trapped in the Saturday Matinee. PS Publishing, 2012. First edition hardback, #157 of 200 signed copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket and decorated boards and a Fine slipcase.
I enjoyed both The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum, even though I knew at the time I was probably missing many of the literary in-jokes. The Name of the Rose in particular is well worth reading, as you’d never believe a 30 page discussion of various medieval Christian heresies could ever be so incredibly funny…
“Harper Lee, whose first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, about racial injustice in a small Alabama town, sold more than 10 million copies and became one of the most beloved and most taught works of fiction ever written by an American, died on Friday in Monroeville, Ala., where she lived. She was 89.”
The list of credible candidates for the great American novel of the 20th century is a short one, and To Kill A Mockingbird is one of the top contenders. If you haven’t read it, make that the next book on your stack; it’s that good.
A follow-up to yesterday’s post, here are the non-fiction books I bought in that Cold Tonnage £5 sale:
Adams, Douglas and John Lloyd. The Deeper Meaning of Liff. Pan Books, 1990. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Near Fine, price-clipped dust jacket.
Carr, Terry. Fandom Harvest. Laissez Faire Productions AB, 1986. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in decorated boards, sans dust jacket, as issued. According to Chalker/Owings (1991), page 538, only 250 hardbacks were done.
(Hitchcock, Alfred) Paul Condon and Jim Sangster. The Complete Hitchcock. First edition trade paperback original, a Fine copy.
(Lovecraft, H.P.) Eddy, Muriel, and C.M. Eddy, Jr. The Gentlemen from Angell Street: Memories of H. P. Lovecraft. Fenham Publishing, 2001. First edition trade paperback original thus, containing additional material not in the 1961 edition, a Fine copy.
Tymn, Marshall B. American Fantasy and Science Fiction: Toward a Bibliography of Works Published in the United States, 1949—1973. Fax Collector’s Editions, 1979. Paperback original, a Very Good+ copy with spine creasing and wear along the spine. Though Tymn authored or co-authored a number of important reference works, this, an attempt to update Bleiler’s Checklist with modern works, limited only to those published in hardback, is generally not numbered among them, as it was largely superseded by Currey and Reginald the same year of publication. Chalker/Owings (1991), page 178, are not kind: “Alas, it’s useless, one of the most worthless pieces of bibliography in the past 20 years or so.” There was a hardback, but Chalker/Ownings says it was just attaching a premade casing to the paperback. Not in Keith L. Justice’s Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Reference.
Wake, Paul, Steve Andrews and Ariel (yes, just “Ariel,” no last name; I can only assume it’s edited by the mermaid from that Disney movie). Waterstone’s Guide to Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. Waterstone Guides, 1998. First edition trade paperback original, a Fine copy. There are some good contributors in here (like John Clute), but the author entries are distributed somewhat randomly. Waterstone’s is a UK bookstore chain, and I imagine these are pretty common on the other side of the pond. Here? Not so much.
Cold Tonnage Books had a sale where all £10 books were £5, so I picked up a fair number. This post covers fiction titles.
Aylett, Steve. The Inflatable Volunteer. Phoenix House, 1999. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, with a publicity postcard signed by Aylett laid in.
Aylett, Steve. Toxicology. Gollancz, 2002. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, with a postcard laid in.
Blish, James. A Dusk of Idols and Other Stories. Severn House, 1996. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket.
Constantine, Storm. The Monstrous Regiment. Orbit, 1989. Trade paperback original, a Fine- copy with a touch of edgewear at head and heel, signed by Constantine.
Ellison, Harlan. Edgeworks 2: Spider Kiss/Stalking the Nightmare. White Wolf, 1996. First edition hardback omnibus thus, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket. When the Edgeworks series first came out, I didn’t pick them up because I already had all the individual works they contained. But at £5 it’s worth picking up for title variant completeness…
Newman, Kim. Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles. Titan Books, 2011. Fine, signed by Newman.
Only doing a separate blog post on this to illustrate a few points about bookselling and collecting.
Brown, Dan. The Da Vinci Code. Doubleday, 2003. First edition hardback (price of $24.95 on flap, “First Edition” and “10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1” numberline on copyright page), a near Fine copy with owner blindstamp on front free endpaper, in a Fine- dust jacket with a small crease to bottom corner of front flap.
The multi-million bestseller. At one point people were getting big bucks for first printings. This copy? I bought it for $2 from the “Nostalgia Bargain” section of a Half Price Books.
Trent Reznor has been offering the individual tracks of his music for other people to remix for a while now. I stumbled across this truly awesome Andrej Prebanda remix of “Hurt” on YouTube:
Now that the New York Times has finally bestirred itself to publish a David Hartwell obituary, it offers me a chance to throw up a few more Hartwell-related links from:
I finally got my copy of Toby Buckell’s Xenowealth collection, a Kickstarter project I first backed in November of 2014.
Buckell, Tobias S. Xenowealth. Self-published, 2016. First edition hardback, one of an unspecified number signed by the author, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket. Short story collection set in the same universe as Crystal Rain. There were only 63 backers of the hardback level, so it’s possible the total print run for this edition is under 100 copies. Due to an error, my name was not listed among the backs on the acknowledgements page, but Toby sent me an extra copy each of the hardback and the trade paperback to make up for it.
