Latest Finds!

[andydecker]

Sometimes monitoring the wish-list pays off. I got this cheap and in a reasonable condition.

It is not a very good movie, the story is threadbare, the satanism is laughable, the pacing is terrible.

But it is easy on the eyes, the Michelle's are attractive leads.

As the novel is written by the screenwriter I am curious to compare both versions. The illustrated part are a few movie stills which are rather restraint. Still a nice idea and I am Kind of baffled that Gorgi did so much effort for a c-list-movie.

[jamesdoig]

Just received the latest issue of Biblio-Curiosa from Chris Mikul, who writes and edits it - articles and reviews of odd books:



Contents
"Any Man, Beast or Buffoon want SMASHING?" The Poetry of William Nathan Stedman (Chris's choice for the worst ever poet)
Ride the Nightmare by Ward Greene
Frank Walford and Twisted Clay (says nice things about the Remins reprint of a couple of years ago)
Notes on an Account of the End of Fergus Hume
When I Lived in Bohemia by Fergus Hume

[jamesdoig]

For a buck at the junk shop. A Sawney Beane novel. No doubt the cover artist is congratulating himself at the accuracy of his depiction of Scottish cannibals.

[ben]

Hi. Never remember to post what goodies I've found on here. In the last few weeks I've grabbed a couple robert faulcon books from the nighthunter series and a few guy n smith books from a nice fella online. Good hunting folks. Oh and how awesome does that front cover of flesh eaters look! Nearly had that same book of ebay. But it went for £20.

[jamesdoig]

Apr 11, 2016 19:13:04 GMT ben said:

Nearly had that same book of ebay. But it went for £20.

Ben, there are quite a few copies online here: www.vialibri.net/ though none are really cheap.

[cromagnonman]

Speaking as someone who grumbles and grouches endlessly about the lack of vintage material to be scavenged from charity shops these days I thought I'd share this discovery made today in the local St Christophers. Quite the contrast to the scree of chick lit and misery memoirs that otherwise cluttered the shelves. A GNS double-header from the days when he was competing against himself for rival imprints. Thing is, GNS really isn't my cup of cocoa at all these days. I doubt I've read a word of his since I was fifteen, back when he was providing a welcome antidote to all the "worthy" literature we were being force fed at school. But these were very well preserved copies which was a wonder all its own seeing as how the average GNS reader back in the day scarcely qualified as a book lover if all the broken spined, coffee ringed and dog eared copies of his books I've seen over the years says anything about them. Plus the fact that its such an uncommon occurrence nowadays to come across books like these in such circumstances that I was possessed of a paternal urge to rescue and preserve them.
Or maybe I just dug the covers. They certainly don't do them like this anymore.

[mattofthespurs]

They certainly don't!
I have those somewhere.
Well done you for rescuing them from the recycling shredder.

[dem]

May 25, 2016 0:48:04 GMT cromagnonman said:

Speaking as someone who grumbles and grouches endlessly about the lack of vintage material to be scavenged from charity shops these days I thought I'd share this discovery made today in the local St Christophers. Quite the contrast to the scree of chick lit and misery memoirs that otherwise cluttered the shelves. A GNS double-header from the days when he was competing against himself for rival imprints. Thing is, GNS really isn't my cup of cocoa at all these days. I doubt I've read a word of his since I was fifteen, back when he was providing a welcome antidote to all the "worthy" literature we were being force fed at school. But these were very well preserved copies which was a wonder all its own seeing as how the average GNS reader back in the day scarcely qualified as a book lover if all the broken spined, coffee ringed and dog eared copies of his books I've seen over the years says anything about them. Plus the fact that its such an uncommon occurrence nowadays to come across books like these in such circumstances that I was possessed of a paternal urge to rescue and preserve them.

Charity shops are fiendish like that. Months of nothing and, just when you decide enough is enough, you've wasted too many hours pointlessly browsing their shelves, lo and behold, a long-sought copy of [insert own Holy Grail]. Since start of year, have very occasionally sifted relative treasure from the dross, i.e., decent copies of Pan Horror 12, The D.Wheatley Library of the Occult edition of The Monk, P. Haining's revamped Sweeney Todd, etc., - just enough to encourage return visits and get depressed at lack of properly horrible paperbacks all over again.

[jamesdoig]

For a buck at Comics Kingdom in Sydney, having a 50% closing down sale. Haven't seen these English translations of the German originals before - apparently only 5 issues were published in the early 90s.

[dem]

May 28, 2016 8:02:03 GMT jamesdoig said:

For a buck at Comics Kingdom in Sydney, having a 50% closing down sale. Haven't seen these English translations of the German originals before - apparently only 5 issues were published in the early 90s.

Thanks James, another mystery solved. Used to see copies of this in a newsagents (!) on the Isle of Dogs, early-mid 'eighies it must have been. Same shop was where I got Robert Bloch's Night Of The Ripper and Shaun Hutson's Breeding Ground - they put on quite a display for the latter. Don't know why, but I never explored the magazine, and it has haunted me ever since. Remembered the 'Jason Darke' name, couldn't think of the title for life of me. Is it a novel in mag format, a series of shorts, or mixture of both?

[cromagnonman]

May 25, 2016 7:17:26 GMT mattofthespurs said:

They certainly don't!
I have those somewhere.
Well done you for rescuing them from the recycling shredder.

Thanks Matt.
The irony is that most charity shops these days seem to be chockerblock with modern pap that truly is fit only for the shredder. Yet it gets allocated valuable shelf space while vintage material is disposed of out of hand. How many elderly NELs and Spheres have been sacrificed to make room for the umpteenth copy of EL James? I can't remember the last time I ever saw a Pan Fleming or an Arrow Wheatley which used to be the staple of such places. There was a time when charity shops were the first resort for vintage paperbacks: now, increasingly, they are assuming the mantle of a final solution.

[cromagnonman]

May 25, 2016 8:06:32 GMT dem said:

Charity shops are fiendish like that. Months of nothing and, just when you decide enough is enough, you've wasted too many hours pointlessly browsing their shelves, lo and behold, a long-sought copy of [insert own Holy Grail]. Since start of year, have very occasionally sifted relative treasure from the dross, i.e., decent copies of Pan Horror 12, The D.Wheatley Library of the Occult edition of The Monk, P. Haining's revamped Sweeney Todd, etc., - just enough to encourage return visits and get depressed at lack of properly horrible paperbacks all over again.

You're more likely to be lucky in one of the smaller local or provincial charity shops, as opposed to the big chains, as they harbour fewer delusions of grandeur and make less distinction between the condition and age of the books they choose to shelve. Which are, let's not forget, all donated to them in good faith. The St Christopher's Hospice shop I frequent doesn't appear to rag any book unless its condition is terminal. Case in point being this beauty - unearthed today - which condition wise is several notches down on the two GNS titles previously excavated there and yet was offered nonetheless.
Cover courtesy of the great Tony Masero.
Worth 30p of anyone's money.

[ohthehorror]

May 28, 2016 20:33:01 GMT cromagnonman said:

May 25, 2016 7:17:26 GMT mattofthespurs said:

They certainly don't!
I have those somewhere.
Well done you for rescuing them from the recycling shredder.

Thanks Matt.
The irony is that most charity shops these days seem to be chockerblock with modern pap that truly is fit only for the shredder. Yet it gets allocated valuable shelf space while vintage material is disposed of out of hand. How many elderly NELs and Spheres have been sacrificed to make room for the umpteenth copy of EL James? I can't remember the last time I ever saw a Pan Fleming or an Arrow Wheatley which used to be the staple of such places. There was a time when charity shops were the first resort for vintage paperbacks: now, increasingly, they are assuming the mantle of a final solution.

My wife ran a charity shop for a while and I used to go in and help out on my days off. The one thing we used to pray we wouldn't get more of was books. This may sound strange coming from someone that frequents forums like this but you really had to see it to believe it. Our stockroom was the size of a large cupboard, or a very small box-room and this had to house everything, not just the books. When you bear in mind that the books took up at least half the space of the stockroom and our actual bookshelf space in the shop itself was a tiny percentage of the overall shop space, it simply wasn't possible to keep all the books we had coming in. On a relatively regular basis we had to make it known via various social media platforms that we would be turning away any book donations for [insert time period]. 

Now this being a horror forum, I now come to the horror part.

The town centre was a couple of minutes away and housed a recycle place that consisted of(and I kid you not) a counter with a large, floor standing weighing scales next to it. You could take anything to them, clothes, magazines, books, literally anything, and it would be weighed and you would be given a few quid(or euro, as it is here) for your 10s of kilos of books(or clothes or whatever). We used to use this service on a regular basis, unfortunately, since the shop's sole purpose was to raise as much money as possible for the animals it was set up to help. 

I suppose what I'm saying here is that, as terrible as it undoubtedly is to pulp 10 kilos of paperbacks for a few euros, the charity shops that do that have other priorities(in my wife's case those priorities were the rescue and future health and well-being of animals), and I can tell you first hand that the fate of decades old second-hand novels is far from their minds when staring into the eyes of a terrified, ill/abused little animal.

In my defense, and as an accessory to the aforementioned crimes, If I'd been managing the shop myself, not a single one of those books would have been disposed of nor turned away. But that doesn't stop me from seeing first hand why that sort of thing happens all to often with charity shops.

Sorry about the lengthy post, but I've been meaning to tell the story of pulping books from the viewpoint of a charity shop worker for a while now. I still hate the practice, but having seen the pressure charity shop managers(and other volunteers) are under to keep the money coming in, I can at least see why it happens.

Ok. Let the lynching begin. AAaaaarrggghhhhh......!!! 


 

[jamesdoig]

May 28, 2016 9:43:27 GMT dem said:

Thanks James, another mystery solved. Used to see copies of this in a newsagents (!) on the Isle of Dogs, early-mid 'eighies it must have been. Same shop was where I got Robert Bloch's Night Of The Ripper and Shaun Hutson's Breeding Ground - they put on quite a display for the latter. Don't know why, but I never explored the magazine, and it has haunted me ever since. Remembered the 'Jason Darke' name, couldn't think of the title for life of me. Is it a novel in mag format, a series of shorts, or mixture of both?

Dem, just a single 48 page story with a couple of crude illustrations thrown in. Published by All Publishing Ltd, Millbridge House, Frensham Surrey, and printed in Guernsey. Copyright is with the good folk of Bastei - Verlag Gustavh H. Lubbe GmbH & Co., and translated by P.J.H. Saunders. #6 is advertised ("The Tomb in Hell") but I'm not sure if it appeared - online lists only have up to #5.

[andydecker]

May 28, 2016 22:27:35 GMT jamesdoig said:

May 28, 2016 9:43:27 GMT dem said:

Thanks James, another mystery solved. Used to see copies of this in a newsagents (!) on the Isle of Dogs, early-mid 'eighies it must have been. Same shop was where I got Robert Bloch's Night Of The Ripper and Shaun Hutson's Breeding Ground - they put on quite a display for the latter. Don't know why, but I never explored the magazine, and it has haunted me ever since. Remembered the 'Jason Darke' name, couldn't think of the title for life of me. Is it a novel in mag format, a series of shorts, or mixture of both?

Dem, just a single 48 page story with a couple of crude illustrations thrown in. Published by All Publishing Ltd, Millbridge House, Frensham Surrey, and printed in Guernsey. Copyright is with the good folk of Bastei - Verlag Gustavh H. Lubbe GmbH & Co., and translated by P.J.H. Saunders. #6 is advertised ("The Tomb in Hell") but I'm not sure if it appeared - online lists only have up to #5.

John Sinclair by Jason Dark is a weekly pulp horror heftroman series which is still going at the moment. Currently with 1976 novella-length novels, most of them were written by only one writer, Helmut Rellergerd (71). He still writes some of them, but now they employ other writers too.

Nightmare in Atlantis was the 5th paperback they did in 1981. As the brand really was successful, they did publish a monthly paperback, as four weekly issues a month were not enough. The paperbacks were a bit longer contentwise. They were cancelled in 2007.
The story is quite simple. Chief Inspector John Sinclair from Scotland Yard is battling the powers of darkness with silver bullets and a magical cross which invokes the arch angels. Of course with a host of friends, and forty years later he still battles the same arch-enemys.
5 paperbacks out of 312 isn't a smashing success, I would say. Let's say to be kind, the England which is the background for most of the tales is not very convincing in its description, and the villians are very comic-booky, as the stories are very action orientated but not gory or very violent. So it doesn't surprise me much that it wasn't a big success abroad.