Keepers of the Trash: Charity Shop Finds

[dem bones]

"Now though I think the situation is getting so desperate that if I see a scruffy looking old paperback I'll pick it up in the hope that even if I can't give it a good home then maybe somebody else can one day. After all, if us sad old gets don't preserve these little treasures then who else is going to? We are the Keepers of the Trash. Can you imagine our grandchildren growing up and never having the chance to read Dracula and the Virgins of the Undead? Doesn't bear thinking about." - Steve Live from the charity shop.

we already have that long-running 'Latest Finds' thread in the NEL section, but how about one devoted exclusively to books - preferably paperback, preferably published before, say, 1990 - you've RESCUED from Charity Shops? i'm sure we're all aware that many of these concerns have adopted the despicable policy of setting aside any battered paperbacks (i.e. the interesting stuff) to be sold as landfill before they even reach the shelves, and if we're not, see the thread i lifted Steve's quote from.

[fritzmaitland]

Being a sometime associate of Franklin Marsh, who'd told me of Glampunk's love for all things 1970s, I couldn't resist rescuing this

If if you didn't support or even like QPR, there's something somehow cherishable about a bloke who turns up for the BBC's (in this case inappropriately named) Superstars sporting prowess TV programme with a monster hangover, and subsequently manages to rack up the record lowest score ever, capsizing his canoe (and Malcolm McDonald's) and shooting the table with the guns on it, narrowly missing his own foot and David Vine along the way.

And if you prefer 1980s excess ...

Interesting tales of the music biz, but shy of dishing up anything really offensive, unlike the nineties...

...what that Trent and Marilyn Manson didn't get up to, eh? Disgusting! And I find it very hard to believe that someone would rent 10050 Cielo Drive and really not know what had gone on there...


Sorry Dem - all this stuff was published after 1990 - I never read the small print.

[dem bones]

hi fritz

just for you and FM, master of the macabre: here's that man stan showing another side to his game.

Tony Blackburn - The Living Legend: An Autobiography (W. H. Allen, Coronet 1985)

i'm finding it increasingly difficult to turn up any trash worth rescuing so it was with much joy i spotted this on a recent creepy crawl of Roman Road. What with Vault busily undergoing a Goth/ posh Victorian lit/ paranormal romance makeover, i've not been able to devote The Living Legend the attention it deserves, but a cursory flick through suggests that, while it may struggle to live up to his masterly
A Laugh In Every Pocket, it certainly has it beaten in the generous photo inset department.

oh, and here's the blurb;

'I was only 18 months old when I discovered something altogether more wonderful than walking or talking. Music. My parents' big old-fashioned radio was on a low table in the living room and somehow I learned how to reach up and turn it on. Already it seemed I'd switched on to my path to fame and fortune. I wanted to be a singer but instead I became the country's top DJ . . .'

Love him or loathe him, the personality of Tony Blackburn has been a constant factor in the life of the nation for over twenty years. In The Living Legend Tony spills the beans on the real story of his highly successful career as a top disc jockey and also reveals many other facets of a life that has been lived in the public eye.

Tony Blackburn is a man who has never been afraid to speak his mind. The constant glare of publicity has inevitably led to many distortions of the truth as Tony sees it and here he sets the record straight on such topics as life on the pirate radio ships Radio Caroline and Radio London, working with DJs like Kenny Everett and John Peel: his long relationship with Radio One, from The Breakfast Show to his highly successful Saturday and Sunday morning programmes; his stormy marriage to Tessa Wyatt; the other women in his life; the state of popular radio today – and his new role as the King of Soul, pioneering a black music revolution on the London airwaves.

[shaun Jeffrey]

I just picked up The Black Druid - Frank Belknap Long (Panther 1975)
The Taste of Fear - Edited by Hugh Lamb (Coronet 1977)
A Wave of Fear - Edited by Hugh Lamb (Coronet 1976)
Weird Tales - Selected and Introduced by Peter Haining (Sphere 1978)
More Weird Tales - Selected and Introduced by Peter Haining (Sphere 1978)
The Blockhouse - Jean-Paul Clebert (Ace Books 1960)

[hugegadjit]

Finding it increasingly hard to find good trash in those places... full of nineties/noughties tosh... where have all the fun books gone?

[Dr Terror]

I had an email from someone the other week who'd bought the first Black Book from a charity shop.

[dem bones]

not quite a charity shop, but i found my copy of The 1st BHF Book Of Horror Stories in the basement of the Notting Hill Books & Comics exchange on an excursion with pulphack. 10p if i remember!