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Post by helrunar on Aug 19, 2019 13:01:53 GMT
That shop sounds marvelous. Have a great time on your next trip!
cheers, Steve
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Post by dem on Sept 29, 2019 19:54:22 GMT
Hereford, Bartestree, Llanidloes, Llangurig, Rhayader, Nant Glas, Dulwich Tuscany, Peckham, Rotherhithe ..... Yesterday the exhaustive 2019 World tour hit Bournemouth, and happily I managed to squeeze in two 20 minute sessions in personal #1 bookshop of them all - in fact, it is one of my favourite places on earth full stop - Comix-Books-Posters-DVD's in Westbourne. Proprietor Gerry is a proper gem, somehow knows the exact location of EVERYTHING no matter what cobwebbed corner it's rotting in. Thanks also to blogger Rhea for sharing several lovely photo's of this most delightful of haunts on The Days We Live For. Hit the link and lose yourself! The day's plunder. |
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Post by Swampirella on Sept 29, 2019 21:08:51 GMT
Hereford, Bartestree, Llanidloes, Llangurig, Rhayader, Nant Glas, Dulwich Tuscany, Peckham, Rotherhithe ..... Yesterday the exhaustive 2019 World tour hit Bournemouth, and happily I managed to squeeze in two 20 minute sessions in personal #1 bookshop of them all - in fact, it is one of my favourite places on earth full stop - Comix-Books-Posters-DVD's in Westbourne. Proprietor Gerry is a proper gem, somehow knows the exact location of EVERYTHING no matter what cobwebbed corner it's rotting in. Thanks also to blogger Rhea for sharing several lovely photo's of this most delightful of haunts on The Days We Live For. Hit the link and lose yourself! The day's plunder. The deadly silence in the Vault all weekend is now explained! Congrats on the great finds!! |
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Post by helrunar on Sept 30, 2019 13:09:48 GMT
Holy Hell, Dem! There used to be a bookshop like that up in Salem Mass. I'm not sure that the proprietor really did know where everything was, but he claimed to do so. One would talk to him through a little window formed by stacks of books with a space large enough for at least some of the owner's face and shoulders to be visible, and the till was through there. I don't think I ever bought anything because it would have involved removing a book lower down from one of those towering horizontally-lain stacks (those are murder on books, btw--I may have shed a tear looking through those photos).
Impressive haul! I never knew Dan Ross published anything under his own name. I am presuming he's the same dude who published as Marilyn Ross, an unending array of "paperback Gothics" including the often-discussed Dark Shadows series. Dan is the chap whose wife (the real life Marilyn Ross) reminisced about the time Dan was just hours within meeting a deadline and finished typing the final 3 chapters of one of his effusions with typewriter perched on his knees in the back seat of their station wagon. It was parked in front of the post office. To which Dan duly took the thick envelope of his completed post to mail off to the outfit that emitted his confections.
Might have been a different Dan Ross, I guess.
cheers, H.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Sept 30, 2019 15:21:25 GMT
I am reminded of Great Expectations, a wonderful bookstore, now long gone, in Evanston, Illinois, close to the campus of Northwestern University. Despite the name, I am not sure they stocked any fiction, but they were a fantastic resource for academic literature. For instance, they seemed to have all the Dover reprints of obscure Russian mathematics treatises, etc. Everything was stored in towering piles on the floor, in no apparent order. But the hippie-like types who worked there always knew exactly where almost anything you asked for was and would pick it out for you from one of the piles. The owner of the store, an older guy, sat enthroned on a sort of podium in the middle of the store. One time I was looking for a copy of Franz Oppenheimer's anarchist classic THE STATE, and for once the assistant was not sure if they had it or not. So he goes to the guy on the podium to ask, causing an explosive reaction. "That awful, awful book!" the old guy screams. "Of course we don't have it! Who wants to know?" At that point I decided to leave.
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Post by helrunar on Sept 30, 2019 16:01:54 GMT
That's hilarious, JoJo. It reminds me of this time I visited this video rental store in downtown Boston back in the mid 1990s. I took a tape of the Diana Ross vehicle Mahogany up to the till to rent it for the weekend. The clerk on duty was horrified when I handed him the tape. "Oh my god, that film is so dated!" he screamed to the shelves of the otherwise empty shop. "I can't believe anyone would want to watch it!"
I always wondered if the clerk made a point of shredding the tape once I returned it, and simply reporting it as "damaged" and "unable to replace."
Curious byways of the strange and weird we have known...
H.
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Post by dem on Sept 30, 2019 17:46:08 GMT
I once innocently enquired after any books pertaining to a certain "authentic" "v**pire" "case" in Atlantis, the Occult bookshop on Museum Street. "There might be something in the comics section upstairs," sneers scary flaming skull tattoo man in basement, before launching into a tirade versus a certain author ("believes his own lies!" was perhaps the most restrained criticism), his wife ("prostitute!") and their mutual tragic fancy-dress sense. Gosh, sorry I asked. A few years later, Mick Mercer wrote to a 'zine of my acquaintance that a certain high-profile Tory cabinet minister was an Atlantis regular (clue: he more recently presented a TV series on GB railway journeys). Specialist subject? Black Magic.
Also, somebody in popular, much-missed Charing X Road book/sexshop 'Lovejoys' once offered me an aniseed ball.
Well, that's me all out of exciting bookshop adventures.
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Post by dem on Mar 9, 2020 6:25:08 GMT
2020 World Tour reached Gerry's Comics, Posters, Books in Westbourne last Saturday (29th Feb). Pleased to confirm that it is delightfully chaotic as ever, though, sadly, didn't have enough time for anything but the most cursory rummage. Even so, I came away with a few treasures. Very attractive late '70's Adam & the Ants and Damned gig posters in window, but was too scared to ask how much .... Stephen Jones & David A Sutton's The Anthology of Fantasy & the Supernatural is AKA The Giant Book of Fantasy & the Supernatural - and very good it is, too. Algernon Blackwood's The Dance of Death is a slimline, six-story sampler featuring The Dance of Death, A Psychical Invasion, The Valley of the Beasts, The South Wind, The Old Man of Visions and The Touch of Pan. Cover artwork is courtesy of the great Alan Lee. The Richie Tankersley Cusick is a Point Horror novel. |
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Post by andydecker on Mar 9, 2020 17:41:28 GMT
Some nice ones!
Ah, Debbie Harry in Videodrome. Those were the days. I really would like to re-watch her arc in the crime show Wiseguy. But it never came out in DVD.
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Post by Dr Strange on Mar 9, 2020 18:15:13 GMT
I really would like to re-watch her arc Is that a typo? |
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Post by andydecker on Mar 9, 2020 19:01:54 GMT
I really would like to re-watch her arc Is that a typo? Hm, I don't know? How?
I remembered her role in Wiseguy's season 2 story-arc Dead Dog Records with Tim Curry, Glenn Frey, Patti D'Arbanville. Something about corruption in the music industry. I read somewhere that there was no DVD because the music rights would have been too expensive. I should have taped it back then :-)
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Post by cromagnonman on Mar 10, 2020 11:14:34 GMT
Debbie Harry: Ah, indeed. Have always been a fan of her back catalogue (and remain pretty taken with her front ones too).
The Videodrome novelisation is a particularly impressive find Dem, and I'm dead jealous. Usually commands prices in the £30-50 bracket.
I'm very fond of that FANTASY & THE SUPERNATURAL anthology, largely on account of Adrian Cole's excellent (and pretty scarce) King Kull pastiche "Treason in Zagadar". But there's lots of other goodies in there too including one of C. Bruce Hunter's Travelling Salesman series which I always enjoyed back in the day.
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Post by dem on Nov 29, 2021 12:39:11 GMT
Took a coach down to S. Coast and back on Friday. So glad that Westbourne's Posters, DVDs, Books has survived the lockdown. If anything, it's more shambolic and supremely consumer unfriendly than I remembered it. Would love to have had an hour or several to explore the murkiest corners, but made do with approx. ten minutes — still came away with some treasures, even if three of the five are replacements for leprous/ fallen apart Pans & Co. |
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Post by dem on Jul 1, 2022 8:31:42 GMT
Managed a way too short ten minutes in Gerry's shop last Friday which looks - and is - madder than ever since a storm blew out the front window which has been boarded ever since. Should you pay a visit, it's unlikely the cheery proprietor will be there, so either phone him (number is on front door) or, if no mobile, ask the charming Juliani in adjoining hair salon (see photo in previous post) if he'd be kind enough to do so. Happily, inside is even a more chaotic mess than ever: no lie, I came close to being buried under an avalanche of paperbacks which, when you think of it would have provided the perfect black punchline. Anyway, blah blah blah. Came away with this three, every one a triumph of criminally uncredited cover art. Richard Curtis - Squirm (Sphere, 1976) Blurb: THE YEAR'S MOST HORRIFIC FILM — NOW A TERRIFYING NOVEL!
THIS WAS THE NIGHT OF THE CRAWLING TERROR!
SQUIRM is a blood-curdling shocker calculated to make you writhe with horror. Georgia doesn't know what's hit it when a freak nightmare of a storm brings down the overhead power lines which then direct a massive electric charge into the wet mud. The slimy, oozing, crawling horror which results — an angry, rampaging mass of carnivorous superworms —is the most terrifying threat to human life ever to be unleashed on (or under) the surface of the planet... Bram Stoker - The Lady of the Shroud (Arrow, 1963) Blurb: High cliffs loomed where the Blue Mountains fell away to the storm-tossed Adriatic. As the steamer moved in close to the shore, a tiny, spectral light could be seen. Eyes strained through the swirling darkness. A shrouded figure of a girl was floating, not in a boat, but in a coffin. Her eyes were shining like stars. This was the Lady of the Shroud.Anon [Harold Q. Masur] - Alfred Hitchcock's Supernatural Tales of Terror & Suspense (Target , 1977; originally Random House, 1973) H. Russell Wakefield - The Triumph of Death
T.V. Olsen - The Strange Valley
Dorothy B. Bennett - The Christmas Spirit
Raymond Chandler - The Bronze Door
Sheila Hodgson - Slip Stream
Patricia Highsmith - The Quest for "Blank Claveringi"
Muriel Spark - Miss Pinkerton's Apocalypse
Alexis Tolstoy - The Reunion After Three Hundred Years
Alex Hamilton - The Attic Express
A.W. Bennett - The Pram
H. Russell Wakefield - Mr. Ash's StudioBlurb: "Here I am again,' says Alfred Hitchcock, 'with as spooky a collection of ghosts and supernatural things as ever kept anybody awake at night.'
That master of Suspense has assembled eleven spine-chilling, blood-curdling tales. 'Happy reading!' he urges. Or should that be happy shuddering? |
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Post by humgoo on Jul 2, 2022 5:43:19 GMT
Anon [Harold Q. Masur] - Alfred Hitchcock's Supernatural Tales of Terror & Suspense (Target , 1977; originally Random House, 1973) This is hilarious, a bit like the guy on YBHS XXII transported to a jungle! Didn't know Target had reprinted the "Alfred Hitchcock" stuff. Great find, thanks! |
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