Book Haul #9

I went to a couple of used bookstores awhile ago but never got around to posting the haul. It’s mostly science fiction/fantasy and dictionaries (okay, so I’m weird).

The big ticket item (ten whole bucks!) is the one that’s probably impossible to make out in either picture: the blue book near the end is a signed 1950 Prime Press first (and only) edition of George O. Smith’s Nomad, serialized in Astounding in 1944-45. I don’t know if the signature is genuine (though it’s a nice bonus if it is) and it obviously doesn’t have a dust-jacket so the cover is a little dingy and the spine is cocked so it’s might not even be worth ten bucks except to me, but the text block is in basically perfect condition and (a) I just wanted the novel regardless and (b) its being a Prime Press book which could join a couple of other hardcovers I have from that era made it irresistible. I was also very happy to find A. Merritt’s only collection, The Fox Woman and Other Stories ($4) which also nearly completes the late ’70s Avon uniform reissues of his work. I’d previously read and enjoyed Harry Harrison’s Deathworld ($3), so it’s nice to get a copy of my own. And I’d previously owned and enjoyed C. M. Kornbluth’s The Explorers ($1), so it’s nice to get that back.

The other eleven books cost a total of two dollars at a quarter or dime apiece. I already had a pair of Malorys and the first three Rice vampire books (the only ones I liked as far as I read, which was the first five, I think) but the Malory is a different edition and a single volume of Rice is nice and takes up less room on the shelves.

The dictionaries are the largest group after the SF/F. I’m really happy to have found the very long Shorter OED, even if it is a Johnny Cash edition of 1944/1956/1964 (edition/latest revision with addenda/latest printing with corrections) and, even if it did cost me a dime, I’m ecstatic to get it for so little. I also didn’t have the ninth edition of the Collegiate, or any New World dictionary, or the Penguin dictionary of literary terms, which dwarfs my others put together.

Finally, for odds and ends, I got two anthologies of poetry/fiction/drama (though To Read Literature has one of the most asinine, counter-productive messages “To the Student” that I’ve ever read), a collection of poetry and essays I actually got more for the essays than the poems (though I may enjoy both or neither), and (mostly restoring a couple of paperbacks I didn’t have anymore) an oddly appealing hardcover of seven Shaw plays.

Book Haul #8

No SF this time. I’ve got various editions of various history books but, of all of them, the Landmark series is, well, a landmark. New translations (or at least revised, in one case) with copious illustrations, maps, sidebars, headers, and all sorts of navigational aids, not least of which is a prodigious index. I got the Thucydides first when I was in the History Book Club (or whatever it’s exactly called), then picked up the Herodotus and Arrian used, and don’t even know where I got the Hellenika. Now I’ve gotten the Xenophon’s Anabasis and the Julius Caesar so, until they bring out the Polybius (bated breath), this is all of them.

Spine-view:

Book Haul #7

This haul is a bit different. You can play “Where’s Waldo & Magic, Inc.?” (which is to say, “Where’s the SF?”) with this one (not to mention “Where’s the Non-Anthology?”). Stray note: the six anthologies contain 579 stories (obviously with plenty of overlap in the litfic anthologies, but still… it’s a lot of stories).

Front:

Spine:

 

Book Haul #6

This isn’t actually a single haul or much of a “haul” even if it had been but, while I was reorganizing the site map slightly and moving the list of previous book haul posts, it occurred to me to add what I’ve gotten so far in this pretty slow year. First pic is of covers; next is of sideways spines. The last two are tangents. (They’re not all the prettiest books, but the words are all there.)

I don’t have all of van Vogt but, as I mention in the Bibliography: A. E. van Vogt post, Out of the Unknown now gives me at least all of “Phase I” van Vogt:

And the splurge of Datlow Omni anthologies was to finally complete those (the Book and Visions series are mostly reprints, while the middle, oddly titled, Best series is mostly original):

Sporadic Book Haul #2

This is a micro-haul which I ordered online early in the current event and which I received awhile ago. Along with a used triple-CD, I got two new books, both SF novels, and four used books: a non-fiction SF book (which finally completes the recovery of both volumes), one poetry book (which finally completes the “New Oxford Books of Verse” series for me), and two history books (which are parts of series). If the thumbnail isn’t big enough and/or the spirit moves you, you can click to embiggen. 🙂

Sporadic Book Haul

Here’s a mid-size (non-library-book-sale) haul. The Cambias was new and the rest were used. Some of the used ones cost up to four bucks but most went for a dollar, a quarter, or even a dime. The thumbnails can be clicked for bigger images.

Spine shot of all:

Covers of trade papers/hard covers:

Covers of paperbacks (and one small hardcover):

Edit (2020-02-26): Not sure how the Bova and Burroughs got backwards. Sorry about that.

Belated Book Haul

I’ve made a little more progress in Project Asimov and will post about that soon but, in the meantime, here’s some book porn. In 2017 and 2018, I posted pics of my purchases at the annual library book sales but neglected to do that for 2019. I didn’t neglect to take the pics, though, so here are the ones of the SF books that I got on the first couple of days . (Some are replacement copies, some are new, and the SF Encyclopedia is the first edition to go with my second and the internet’s third.)

(If you want, you can click on the thumbnails to see the full-size pics.)

Spine shot of single-author mass-market paperbacks.

Same, but with full-frontal bookity.

Spine shot of anthologies, tradepapers, and hardcovers.

And a front-cover shot of the same.

Edit (2019-01-04): Made thumbnails bigger.

Book Haul!

Awhile ago, I went to the library book sale. This year’s selection of speculative fiction was not as good as last year’s and, again, I ended up getting proportionally more fantasy and horror than I’d ideally aim for (though it is hard to find science fiction I do want and don’t have—in several cases, in both SF/F/H and other categories, I got replacement copies rather than outright new books). The lack of SF did allow me to devote a little more time to looking through some other subjects. On a general note, there was a good crowd which put a few drops into the county’s bucket.

As I did last year, I’m posting some pics. Click to embiggen (and if your browser auto-resizes and you want to see it full-size you may need to click again or do something else).

BookPorn!

As they say. I think. I hope…

My public library had its somewhat annual booksale recently. Since it puts all its literature (including poetry!) in General Fiction, its philosophy in General Non-Fiction, and considers books about raising dogs, cats, birds, etc., to be “Science,” I came away a bit deficient in those categories – even more so than usual, for some reason. But I did manage some science. The “Biography & History” is no more granular than its description implies but I did manage some of that and some Reference, too. And there is, at least, an SF/F/H section which is actually SF/F/H. Almost everything I got came from there and, perhaps due to the selection, much more of that was fantasy and horror than usual. I also got some replacements for books I had in poor condition or even gave some books I used to have a second chance, so it wasn’t as cost-effective as it might have been if they’d all been new to me but it was still pretty good.

It was also nice, on a library/social level, to see that the sale was quite busy and that the SF section was among the busiest, even if, on a personal level, it might have resulted in stuff I’d have liked to get disappearing faster.

So: pics, or it didn’t happen! Here are a couple of spine pics followed by five of full frontal bookity.