Book Hauls!

[dask]

Checked out the local library's annual winter book sale this weekend and gathered what could be called my desert isle collection. If I were stranded on an "uncharted desert isle" with tropical sunshine, swaying palm trees and a 24 hour Starbucks this seems like a pretty darn good way to wait to be rescued:

THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS by Erskine Childers, one of The Best Mysteries Of All Time as published by The Reader's Digest and apparently not one of their ugly condensations but contains the full text.

THE BLACK LIZARD ANTHOLOGY OF CRIME FICTION edited by Edward Gorman. Trade paperback collection of short thrillers focusing on the noir side of crime.

THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM edited by John Beecroft. Hardback from the Modern Library. Smaller than the average hardback but larger than the normal mass market paperback, in other words the perfect size.

THE LIFE AND WORKS OF BEETHOVEN by John N. Burk. Also from the Modern Library.

THE INDISPENSABLE NOVELS OF SCIENCE selected by Donald A. Wollheim. Perhaps the most interesting book of the bunch. What are these indispensable novels? As I slide this 700 + page omnibus from its slipcase (yes, it has one of those. Wasn't around in 1951 but it seems this hardback from The Book Society got the royal treatment) I find the following inside:
THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON by H.G. Wells
BEFORE THE DAWN by John Taine
THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME by H.P. Lovecraft
ODD JOB by Olaf Stapledon

I already have the Wells and Lovecraft and somewhere I have a Stapledon but not sure which one. Don't have any Taine that I am aware of and that makes the fifty cents I paid for this collection worth every penny.

 

[Bick]

THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM edited by John Beecroft. Hardback from the Modern Library. Smaller than the average hardback but larger than the normal mass market paperback, in other words the perfect size.

Nice haul. I love Somerset Maugham. He's one of those writers that had a considerable formative influence on my literary education and view of the world, along with Greene. I should read more by him. The Moon and Sixpence was a favourite, also the Narrow Corner and The Razor's Edge.

 

[J-Sun]

THE INDISPENSABLE NOVELS OF SCIENCE selected by Donald A. Wollheim. Perhaps the most interesting book of the bunch.

Oh man, what a score. Let me know how the Taine goes - the others I have (well, except for Stapledon's James Bond novel ) but the Taine is hard to find, as is the whole omnibus. Very cool very early stuff.

I hope to get to my library book sale soon and, if I do, I'll be sure to report back.

Bick - is Of Human Bondage a good place to start or the stories or..? I picked up the novel (at the last library book sale, coincidentally) and was figuring on starting with that.

 

[Bick]

Bick - is Of Human Bondage a good place to start or the stories or..? I picked up the novel (at the last library book sale, coincidentally) and was figuring on starting with that.

Almost certainly a good place to start J-Sun, except that, ahem... despite being a big fan of Maugham... I've never actually read his most famous book! Good lord, what an admission. Of the 7 or 8 I have read, 'The Moon and Sixpence' is a good one to start with, and I liked 'The Magician' a good deal too. These are both based on interesting real-life characters (Gauguin and Aleister Crowley, respectively). Both these books a good deal shorter than Bondage, so you'll find out if he's for you with a lesser undertaking.

 

[J-Sun]

Almost certainly a good place to start J-Sun, except that, ahem... despite being a big fan of Maugham... I've never actually read his most famous book! Good lord, what an admission. Of the 7 or 8 I have read, 'The Moon and Sixpence' is a good one to start with, and I liked 'The Magician' a good deal too. These are both based on interesting real-life characters (Gauguin and Aleister Crowley, respectively). Both these books a good deal shorter than Bondage, so you'll find out if he's for you with a lesser undertaking.

No problem - I've read almost every Leigh Brackett SFF book except The Long Tomorrow which may be her most famous and is regarded by critics as her best and, while the other examples aren't coming to me, I know there are more. I don't like reading online but there are PDF scans of the titles you mention on archive.org, so I downloaded them just in case and I'll keep an eye out at the book sale if I manage to get there. Thanks.

 

[Extollager]

A big box of giveaways from my Seattle-area book supplier -- some for me to keep, some to pass on to students. Keepers for me include a vintage Bantam paperback (1962) of Harry Harrison's Planet of the Damned, Javor's The Rim-World Legacy (anyone know anything about this one?), several other sf books, several C. S. Lewis and Tolkien works, some nice classics, etc. (including a Signet edition of Dickens's excellent late novel Our Mutual Friend, with, I believe, a Milton Glaser cover)...

 

[J-Sun]

I gave the library a bunch of money and got another 41 books I didn't need - but it was very cool to find twenty-five SF books, a half-dozen history books, five philosophy books, and five misc. books. Among the SF, some of the least expected were an Ace double of PKD's Dr. Futurity/The Unteleported Man and EFR's Men, Martians and Machines. Also got Aldiss' two-volume anthology of Galactic Empire stories.

 

[Randy M.]

I gave the library a bunch of money and got another 41 books I didn't need - but it was very cool to find twenty-five SF books, a half-dozen history books, five philosophy books, and five misc. books. Among the SF, some of the least expected were an Ace double of PKD's Dr. Futurity/The Unteleported Man and EFR's Men, Martians and Machines. Also got Aldiss' two-volume anthology of Galactic Empire stories

Men, Martians and Machines is an old favorite of mine. In my early 20s I was sick at home and started reading from Adventures in Time and Space (as I remember) and right after I read Russell's story I dug out a couple of his books and started reading. Great fun. Nice score (or Score).

Randy M.

 

[dask]

A big box of giveaways from my Seattle-area book supplier -- some for me to keep, some to pass on to students. Keepers for me include a vintage Bantam paperback (1962) of Harry Harrison's Planet of the Damned, Javor's The Rim-World Legacy (anyone know anything about this one?)

I read the Javor a long time ago and didn't think it was as good as I heard it was.

 

[dask]

I gave the library a bunch of money and got another 41 books I didn't need

Ain't that the way it is? Helpful hint: if your library has a freebie shelf that it restocks regularly---STAY AWAY! Especially when old out of print (but really cool) hardbacks show up. As for the Russell, I would have gotten it just for the cover.

 

[dask]

Nice haul. I love Somerset Maugham. He's one of those writers that had a considerable formative influence on my literary education and view of the world, along with Greene. I should read more by him. The Moon and Sixpence was a favourite, also the Narrow Corner and The Razor's Edge.

I wonder how he is as an editor. Somewhere along the line I picked up W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM'S INTRODUCTION TO MODERN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE, a 1943 hardback. Lots of nice looking stuff.

 

[dask]

Oh man, what a score. Let me know how the Taine goes - the others I have (well, except for Stapledon's James Bond novel ) but the Taine is hard to find, as is the whole omnibus. Very cool very early stuff.

If you have access to Baird Searles A READER'S GUIDE TO SCIENCE FICTION you should check out what he has to say about Taine's work."Bizarre scientific premises...unlikely plots" and to give an example he uses BEFORE THE DAWN. I especially find his summary intriguing: "seldom in science fiction has a writer's work evidenced so much science and so little fiction." Just might be my next book.

 

[J-Sun]

Nice score (or Score)

J-Sun with the Jay Score.

If you have access to Baird Searles A READER'S GUIDE TO SCIENCE FICTION you should check out what he has to say about Taine's work."Bizarre scientific premises...unlikely plots" and to give an example he uses BEFORE THE DAWN. I especially find his summary intriguing: "seldom in science fiction has a writer's work evidenced so much science and so little fiction." Just might be my next book.

Don't have that, but it sounds cool and makes the Taine sound cool, too. Taine - you probably know - was the pseudonym of a mathematician so I figure he would have a high science-to-fiction ratio.

 

[dask]

Not sure how this fits into the canon but for 10¢ at the Salvation Army, if I put it back on the shelf only to come back later to find someone else picked it up instead, I'd have to slit my own throat.

 

[j d worthington]

Not sure how this fits into the canon but for 10¢ at the Salvation Army, if I put it back on the shelf only to come back later to find someone else picked it up instead, I'd have to slit my own throat.

Well, having taken a look at the TOC, I'd say it's a rather mixed bag. The bulk of these are indeed stories of which Lovecraft wrote the majority of the text, though there are a few exceptions (particularly "The Night Ocean", which is a quiet little masterpiece on its own). Should you be curious about where I'd place each one, drop me a PM, and I'll get my response back to you as soon as I'm able (keeping in mind that I've been putting in 7-day, 12-hour-per-day weeks lately.....)

 

[J-Sun]

Looks like it'd be a great companion to the B&N "The Complete Fiction" which isn't, as it lacks the title story and other such "collaborations". It'd make it more complete, anyway. That's a fine dime.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Went to a used bookstore and got some stuff. Of SFF interest are Rain in the Doorway by Thorne Smith (1933), Chronocules by D. G. Compton (1970), and Kampus by James E. Gunn (1977).

 

[Extollager]

Five John Buchan books: Huntingtower, Sick Heart River, The Half-Hearted, The Free Fishers, and the story collection The Far Islands.

 

[dask]

The short story collection sounds like a great find.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Not exactly a book haul but... I was in the far reaches of our attic yesterday and found a cardboard box full of books I had completely forgotten I owned. (I know for a fact I haven't opened this box since I moved into this house and that was 23 years ago.) A whole stack of early 1960's Analog magazines, a whole bunch of comics (including a complete run of Marvel's Unknown Worlds), four incredibly old Tarzan Adventures one of which includes Michael Moorcock's first published story (it's f***ing awful!), one of Vargo Statton's novels - which in a masochistic way I am really looking forward to reading! and loads of other goodies. This'll keep me away from the second hand bookshops for a bit...