Latest Finds II

[jamesdoig]

There are three days of it, and it's heavily advertised - here's last week's free local rag:



Here's part of the horror section (not sure how a Peter Wimsey book got in there):



A few more picked up on the last day - was please to get the companion volume to the Book of Robert E. Howard for $2:



Picked up na couple more Colin Wilson novels for some reason:



Making of 2001:



And the pick of the book fair:



Extract:

Tanamura: Junka, what's going on?
Junka: We're discussing what to do with Godzilla.
Tanamura: There is the Thing. It might defeat Godzilla.
Masuta: That's silly...wait, go on...
Tanamura: My idea is to ask it for assistance against Godzilla.
Masuta: That's it! You're a genius!
Tanamura: That's what I think. Do you think I should get a raise?
(Godzilla vs. the Thing, 1964)

[dem]

Feb 12, 2023 20:54:07 GMT jamesdoig said:

There are three days of it

Is this an annual thing? An event of this magnitude is so cheering when we hear so much about nobody buying/ wanting/ reading/ having any fondness for physical books any more.

BTW, how's the downsizing going?

[jamesdoig]

Feb 12, 2023 21:17:59 GMT dem said:

Is this an annual thing?

BTW, how's the downsizing going?

Yep, it's annual - it's been going since the 1980s I think, but only one a year back then, and a much smaller venue.

Downsizing indeed.

[andydecker]

Thanks for the pictures. Some interesting books there.

While I have most of the Howard Berkley edition, I never bothered with those two "Books of Howard". Later I regreted this. It is such a fine edition. The three Wagner edited Conan's were read but are still near-mint, I guess, and they have a special place in my Howard collection.

[jamesdoig]

Latest issue of Chris Mikul's Biblio-Curiosa arrived yesterday, with the usual excellent essays on obscure books and aquthors:



Contents
Satan's Drome by William Reeves
Everything is an illusion: The Writings of Ladislav Klima
Fugitive Anne by Mrs Campbell Praed
Remembrance of a Religio-Maniac by D. Davidson
The Flaw in the Sapphire by Charles M. Snyder

I particularly like the essay on Kladislav Klima, who was new to me - a guy who believed every human being creates his or her own universe - and lived his life according to this belief.

[helrunar]

That sounds fascinating, James. I'm intrigued by the image and title of the novel on the cover. I keep reading that one title as Remembrance of a Flagello-maniac, LOL.

cheers, Hel.

[jamesdoig]

[helrunar]

That's such a bijou little volume. You find ALL the best artifacts from our glorious past and benighted present, James.

cheers, Hel.

[dem]

Pair from this morning's market. Bookaholism.

Nathan Clair: Scottish Ghost Stories
H. T.:Bill For the Use of a Body

Rosemary Gray [ed] - Scottish Ghost Stories (Wordsworth, 2009)

John Buchan - The Watcher by the Threshold
------------- The Outgoing of the Tide
------------- Skull Skerry
------------- No Man’s Land
------------- Summer Weather
------------- The Oasis in the Snow
------------- The Far Islands
S.R. Crockett - A Cry Across the Black Water
James Hogg - The Story of Euphemia Hewit
------------- The Brownie of the Black Haggs
------------- The Mysterious Bride
------------- 'Mary Burnet’
Andrew Lang - Ticonderoga
George MacDonald - The Old Nurse’s Story
Robert Marshall - The Haunted Major
Margaret Oliphant - Old Lady Mary
------------- The Open Door
------------- The Library Window
------------- The Portrait
Sir Walter Scott - The Tapestried Chamber
------------- Wandering Willie’s Tale
------------- My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror
Robert Louis Stevenson - Ticonderoga: A Legend of the West Highlands
------------- Markheim
------------- Thrawn Janet
------------- The Body-Snatcher
------------- Olalla
Anonymous - The Ghost of Craig-Aulnaic
------------- The Doomed Rider
------------- The Weird of the Three Arrows
------------- The Laird of Balmachie’s Wife
------------- Michael Scott
------------- The Haunted Ships
------------- Glamis Castle

Blurb:
Scottish Ghost Stories
Selected by ROSEMARY GRAY

Scotland has a notoriously rich and diverse cultural tradition when it comes to the supernatural. Many of her greatest writers from Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg to Robert Louis Stevenson and John Buchan have explored the country's unique folkloric heritage to spine-chilling effect. From Highlands to Lowlands, from blasted heath or remote glen to wretched hovel or austere castle, the very topography lends itself somehow to the strange and unexplainable.

Leading off Edinburgh's colourful Royal Mile, which runs from the Palace of Holyrood to the gaunt castle on the rock, there are many narrow 'wynds' — passages ancient and mysterious. As soon as you leave the sunshine and enter these dark and reeking ways you know that you are in the company of ghosts and spirits — unhappy souls condemned for ever to roam this antique city.

Tormented spectres like them wander the pages of this disquieting collection. Lock your door, turn up the lights, put extra logs on the fire and as you start to read, pray to be delivered from 'ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night'.

Dennis Wheatley - Bill For The Use of a Body (Book Club, 1965; originally Hutchinson, 1964)

Blurb:
When Dennis Wheatley flew off to tour the Far East, anyone could have foretold that he would soon be entertaining his vast public with a gripping tale set in the flamboyant Orient.
The opening of the story is macabre; a Japanese father regarding the severed head of his son which has been sent to him in a box> Of that, the lovely half-English, half-Chinese Merry Sang knew nothing, neither did Julian Day nor Bill Urata, both of whom were head over heels in love with her; but the father's thirst for revenge brought all three of them into deadly peril.

[jamesdoig]

From the free book stall up the street:

[Swampirella]

Feb 25, 2023 21:13:13 GMT jamesdoig said:

From the free book stall up the street:

A great find, and for free to boot! The gods smiled upon you; needless to say that's a great cover.

[dem]

Feb 25, 2023 21:13:13 GMT jamesdoig said:

From the free book stall up the street:

Now there's a find. I enjoyed Jeff Popple's introduction to the Horwitz nurses-in-peril-from-sado-Japs WW2 novels in Paperback Fanatic 46 - yet another bloody genre in themselves. At this end, some kind soul recently donated two early '60's issues of Fiction, the French SF digest, to our Little Free Library.

[dem]

Sclater Street market, Bethnal Green this morning. 900+ pages of bookstacy — good nick, too.
Jon Warren - Official Price Guide: Paperbacks (House of Collectibles, 1991)

Blurb:
JUDGING A BOOK BY ITS COVER
Whether as original works or reprints from hardcover, the most famous books and authors of all time have been published in paperback. Collecting vintage books is fast becoming the trend in affordable collectibles. Turn to The Official Price Guide to Paperbacks to determine how valuable your bookshelf could be.
COMPREHENSIVE COVERAGE of 41,000 listings-more than any other guide-representing every genre of writing: fiction, science fiction, mystery, humor, novelizations of movies, all identified with concise, easy-to-follow descriptions.
EVERY MAJOR PUBLISHER, AUTHOR, AND EVERY COVER ARTIST from 1929 to 1981 is represented, along with such helpful research tools as publishing histories and an author index.
MANY RARE EDITIONS are featured, for that extra collector's edge.
HANDS-ON ADVICE from professionals, with ideas for theme collecting, grading criteria, and nomenclature, as well as tips on buying and selling.
EXTENSIVELY ILLUSTRATED with over 300 cover photographs, plus a special eight-page color insert.





These from same place over recent Sundays.

Steve Jones - London Through The Keyhole (Wicked Publications, 1991)

Introduction
At First the Infant
And Then the Lover
Full of Strange Oaths
They Have Their Entrances and Exits
All The World's a Stage
The Last Scene of All

Blurb:
"Curiosity led me two or three times to look through the keyhole of the chamber door. The first time I looked through I could very plainly see, on one side of the bed ..."

The maid servant went on to give damning testimony in the eighteenth century courtroom, the case ending in 'divorce from bed, board and mutual cohabitation.'

Life in the capital was hard, especially for women. Many of the poor had to choose between domestic service and prostitution, unmarried pregnant women between a dangerous abortion and the baby-farmer. How they survived, made the most of their love lives, marriages and leisure time is the main theme of this book. With many contemporary accounts, photographs and illustrations we are able to obtain an idea of London life usually kept secret behind locked doors.

On a lighter note we expose some of the capital's eccentrics, more bizarre fashions and strange stories from the theatre.
If you are interested in people — their lives, loves and leisure, join us for a peek at 'London through the keyhole.'

Anthony Bruno - Seven (Bloomsbury, 1995)

Blurb:
GLUTTONY GREED SLOTH PRIDE ENVY LUST WRATH
A series of crimes are being committed which are so depraved and twisted that even veteran city cops are shocked. Each murder comes with a name.
Somerset doesn't want this case. The city's best homicide cop, he's just one week from retiring - a week he planned to spend training his replacement David Mills, a gung-ho rookie. But by the second murder, Somerset knows there's a madman out there, and only he can stop him.
Somerset's instinct is to catch this psycho by getting inside his mind. Mills' way is to blow his head off. They're two mismatched partners combing their violent city for a cunning, macabre, and utterly ruthless killer. And they better catch him fast, because this dark angel is promising to avenge all seven deadly sins - and the last one will be the most shocking of all.

Stephen King - The Dark Half (Guild, 1989)

Blurb:
Thad Beaumont is a writer. In the not-too-distant past the literary press was full of critical acclaim for his work. Then he hit a period of difficulty with his writing, and he invented George Stark. At first, Stark was a bit of fun, a pseudonym, complete with sinister author biography, under which Thad could create violent and commercial thrillers. But the thrillers became bestsellers and soon Stark was earning far more money than Beaumont, and Beaumont was creating nothing at all.
But now Thad is feeling better. The father of infant twins, he's beginning to write for himself again. He no longer needs George Stark, and somehow relieved that the game is over, he announces that Stark will write no more. He even "buries" him, with a specially made headstone, for a magazine photo-feature.
Which is all very funny and a happy ending to a lucrative but strange period in the life of Thad and Liz Beaumont. Except for one thing. George Stark doesn't want to die. Impossibly, terrifyingly, in an orgy of violence, he appears to have returned -a killing machine intent on destroying anything and everything that stands between him and the man who created him...

[jamesdoig]

Another one from the free library:

[Jojo Lapin X]

Mar 13, 2023 20:46:46 GMT jamesdoig said:

Another one from the free library:

The mysterious world of Australian cinema! I saw an Australian film once. I think it was about a young man who went somewhere to be a schoolteacher. I think the twist was that a brother and sister that he got to know had an incestuous relationship. Can you identify the film?