The Bibliophilia Thread

[Mythopoeika]

I've been to Barcelona just once and I came away thinking it's the kind of city I'd like to live in. And I'm not a fan of city living.

 

[Yithian]

I couldn't resist a signed copy of the first book by the artist mentioned here:

http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/plug-it-if-it-deserves-it.58963/page-3#post-1751361

[Fantastic downloadable preview there].

All painted using egg tempera, which accounts for the pastel-like colours--apparently a painfully slow and rather unforgiving medium.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempera

 

[David Plankton]

All painted using egg tempera

I have a book with paintings from three generations of the Wyeth family and I think it was Andrew Wyeth who used tempera. His work really stands out because of it.

Lovely book, that caravan picture is very nice.

 

[Spookdaddy]

I am currently a resident of Barcelona, and yesterday, as well as being St George's Day in the UK, it was Sant Jordi in Catalonia - on which day it is traditional for couples to go out and buy a rose for the female, and a book for their partner. In reality these days each gets a book, although there are a hell of a lot of roses flying about too...

Incidentally, I forgot to mention that I got a copy of The Gray Notebook, by Catalan author Josep Pla. She got a copy of Los Autoestopistas Galácticos, containing the first three books of Douglas Adams series.

And very handsome it is too. Literature is pretty expensive in Spain, but books are beautifully designed and produced - paperback and hardback alike. They take reading very seriously here and it breaks my heart a little when wandering around bookshops that my Spanish is not so good.*

With this in mind, I've taken to graphic novels - employing the theory that the writing is not so dense and the images give me a bit of a boot in the right direction. Currently reading Sostiene Pereira - a graphic version of Antonio Tabbuchi's novel (Pereira Maintains, in English), which is a favourite of mine.

Graphic Novels are also something taken very seriously in Barcelona - I'm less than five minutes walk from this place:

...Continuarà Comics on Via Laietana. Kind of makes me wish I was more of a fan - and had more money.


*Actually, probably just as well - if I was buying books in other languages too then I'd probably have to live off a diet of cardboard and puddlewater.

 

[Yithian]

Oh, no.

A near-fine copy of H.E. Bates' Down The River (1937) has popped up for sale. It has the first run dust-jacket with sharp edges and looks lovely. It's the companion book to Through The Woods (1936 - pictured on the first page of this thread), but the seller is asking for £250 + Postage.

Get thee behind me, Satan.

 

[titch]

Oh, no.

A near-fine copy of H.E. Bates' Down The River (1937) has popped up for sale. It has the first run dust-jacket with sharp edges and looks like lovely. It's the companion book to Through The Woods (1936 - pictured on the first page of this thread), but the seller is asking for £250 + Postage.

Get thee behind me, Satan.

Do it. Without sin there can be no redemption.

 

[Spookdaddy]

Do it. Without sin there can be no redemption.

And anyway - I always thought that 'behind me' was an odd position to put Satan. Personally, I'd rather be able to see what he's doing with that fork than have it bringing up the rear.

 

[Yithian]

Do it. Without sin there can be no redemption.

Ah, you see, there's a minor problem here.

When I originally applied for a credit card overseas--a few years back now--they were reluctant to approve it as I was on a temporary visa (a flight risk, I suppose), so the compromise they offered (I'm a pretty good customer) was that I have a card in my name that is technically a subsidiary card on my wife's account.

All well and good, but now every time I use it to purchase something my wife gets an instant notification on my phone--and she has just flown off for a trip with her friend.

It's going to look like I waited for her to leave!

 

[Mythopoeika]

Ah, you see, there's a minor problem here.

When I originally applied for a credit card overseas--a few years back now--they were reluctant to approve it as I was on a temporary visa (a flight risk, I suppose), so the compromise they offered (I'm a pretty good customer) was that I have a card in my name that is technically a subsidiary card on my wife's account.

All well and good, but now every time I use it to purchase something my wife gets an instant notification on my phone--and she has just flown off for a trip with her friend.

It's going to look like I waited for her to leave!

Just text her and ask nicely. Honesty is the best policy, etc.

 

[David Plankton]

It's going to look like I waited for her to leave!

Why not contact the seller with your card details and ask them to hold it for a few days?

 

[Mythopoeika]

Why not contact the seller with your card details and ask them to hold it for a few days?

Crafty thinking, Mr Plankton!

 

[Yithian]

I received a lovely book in the mail today. It went missing--location unknown--for three weeks after dispatch and arrived this morning with a sheepish look and no word of explanation.

Anyway, it's a first edition from 1984 in close to perfect condition. Alas, like many titles from the 70s and 80s it was printed on paper that was prone to browning, but it's still the nicest example of the book I could find.

So far I've only dipped into it over tea, but I think I'm going to love it. I have no idea how much editorial assistance he had, but the authorial voice and turns of phrase are unmistakably his--and a very warm and humane narrator he seems, too.

 

[Spookdaddy]

Here is the first book I ever bought for myself, A Golden Land - pictured next to the most recent. (Actually the latter has been sitting in a parcel at my mums for months while I’ve been away. But, if not strictly the most recently purchased, it is the most recently read):

I remember very vividly the whole process of buying that first book. I would have been about six years old and very excited that I was making a choice for myself. I was with my mum. It was a winter’s afternoon and already dark outside the shop. The book was on one of those spinning wire racks. The newsagent’s we bought it from had been the stabling for a pub and still had a vaguely agricultural feel about it.

I suppose I bought it around a time midway through the period when the photographs in the more recent book were taken – and it seems quite eerie that I was bumbling about in the same - so close but so far away - world that those oddly mysterious and beautiful photographs were taken.

I’ve always thought that our more recent past – even the one we’ve been through ourselves – is somehow more mythical and ungraspable than a historical past we were never part of. And nothing about those two books, and the feelings they inspire, makes me think otherwise.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

It was a winter’s afternoon and already dark outside the shop. The book was on one of those spinning wire racks.

Evocative details! Those remind me of the racks in the hinterland of a newsagent-by-the-railway where we somtimes got penny-bangers. I think those carousels may have contained porn, though I was oblivious to that at the age I was.

What sticks in my mind is the lurid style of the Fu Manchu covers, evil racist, no doubt, yet alluring. It all got mixed up with the inside-information that the pale boy who served you there was very unwell.

Shops just don't have that kind of depth any more!

 

[Yithian]

(I'm just going to pretend that all is normal on this board until we manage to get some certainty).

I received a new book in the post this morning. It was lost by British customs for a month and finally turned up today. The actual book is lovely, but the cover is slightly imperfect. Nevertheless, I know some members here are fans and might find it interesting: a first edition, published in 1975 but written before The Sweeney actually aired.

 

[David Plankton]

I've never read anything by this author but I'm tempted to give this a try -

The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition

Some sample illustrations can be seen here -

https://cdn.waterstones.com/images/1/4340/9781473223547.pdf

I know they are highly regarded within the genre but it would be interesting to hear any board members opinions on this series of books.

 

[cycleboy2]

These are the signed books, vast amounts of crime fiction, some modern fiction and a very few sporting biographies (inc Geoff Boycott, David Gower, cyclist Nicole Cooke). Some of the shelves are stacked two deep to avoid some covers fading on some of the rarer books.

 

[Verbal Earthworm]

I've never read anything by this author but I'm tempted to give this a try -

The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition

Some sample illustrations can be seen here -

https://cdn.waterstones.com/images/1/4340/9781473223547.pdf

I know they are highly regarded within the genre but it would be interesting to hear any board members opinions on this series of books.

I would say it would be worth buying for Charles Vess' art alone. I also am tempted.

 

[cycleboy2]

And these are some of the landing books - mainly crime fiction paperbacks - on high-level collaged bookshelves - I'm trying to make the best use of the space available. I also collaged the door to the attic. There are boxes of books in the attic and on other sets of shelves though I'm trying to thin them out, with some success.

 

[Coal]

And these are some of the landing books - mainly crime fiction paperbacks - on high-level collaged bookshelves - I'm trying to make the best use of the space available. I also collaged the door to the attic. There are boxes of books in the attic and on other sets of shelves though I'm trying to thin them out, with some success.

View attachment 12492 View attachment 12493 View attachment 12494

Like those shelves, I was wondering where to put some much needed new bookshelves...

 

[David Plankton]

I had £26 of points on a Waterstones card so I bought myself this -


It's already provided hours of entertainment and inspiration for the 'To Read' pile.

 

[packshaud]

When you want to get a certain set of books, you must always get first the scarcer ones, so that you will complete it. I learned this when I dabbled into coin collection and there was the concept of key dates--the scarcest ones, that will be difficult to acquire.

The first thing you must not do is to tell other people, that might get ahead of you, what you are doing, before you buy the rare titles.

Around 2010 I started to acquire all the books in the bibliography of Monsters by John Michael Greer. The rarer titles, let's call them key books, were quite annoying to get. I was only able to get them through donations, for which I am eternally grateful.


Silkie! by Dorsey Griffin, was privately printed --"hand-set in 12-point Garamond, on a Chandler & Price 6-1/2 x 10 inch press, hand-printed, -bound and -machined by the author", according to the colophon--, and only 300 copies were made. A daughter of the late author donated one of the two copies she had a copy to me.


Final Report of the SUNDS Planning Project by Neal Holtan et al. was donated to me by the Bethel University (Minnesota, USA). They had two copies of the book.

The other difficult ones I bought by myself. I am including their covers here. It was difficult to source a copy of Fairy Tradition in Britain with the gaudy dustcover.


So far I already bought 76 of the 167 books. I am also posting here the cover of a book that is not related to Greer's Monsters: Kitsuné by Kiyoshi Nozaki. Written in 1961, this is the only book I know of, in English, that discusses Japanese foxes and was made before the folklore was contaminated by modern depictions of them (read anime and manga). Several illustrations are colored, I included one of them.


As I acquired the books, I ran into several problems, related to editions. My interest was to get all the content of the bibliography, not necessarily rare birds.

An example: Ghosts of the Old West by Earl Murray. ISBN 9780880294706 is one of the original editions, and it has several photos. A later edition, ISBN 9780312867959, includes three extra chapters--The Face, Sacred Ground, and Night of the Blizzard, but it lacks the photos. The only solution is to buy both. Later books are not always better--in Unexplained, Jerome Clark decided it was proper to purge all cases of UFOs from the third edition. While including some new material. Again, gotta buy 'em all. Some of the books have newer editions with other names. Some of the books are listed with wrong titles.

But so far, all is going well.

 

[Yithian]

Here is the first book I ever bought for myself, A Golden Land - pictured next to the most recent. (Actually the latter has been sitting in a parcel at my mums for months while I’ve been away. But, if not strictly the most recently purchased, it is the most recently read):


View attachment 11079

I remember very vividly the whole process of buying that first book. I would have been about six years old and very excited that I was making a choice for myself. I was with my mum. It was a winter’s afternoon and already dark outside the shop. The book was on one of those spinning wire racks. The newsagent’s we bought it from had been the stabling for a pub and still had a vaguely agricultural feel about it.

I suppose I bought it around a time midway through the period when the photographs in the more recent book were taken – and it seems quite eerie that I was bumbling about in the same - so close but so far away - world that those oddly mysterious and beautiful photographs were taken.

I’ve always thought that our more recent past – even the one we’ve been through ourselves – is somehow more mythical and ungraspable than a historical past we were never part of. And nothing about those two books, and the feelings they inspire, makes me think otherwise.

View attachment 11080View attachment 11081

Just been alerted to this once again by a re-animated end-of-year retrospective article and have ordered.

https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-43141667

The only criticism most reviewers seem to have is that it's too damned small, but it'll make a perfect companion to my reading about the Flying Squad in the 60s and 70s--and the Ripper stuff.

 

[Spookdaddy]

...The only criticism most reviewers seem to have is that it's too damned small, but it'll make a perfect companion to my reading about the Flying Squad in the 60s and 70s--and the Ripper stuff.

It's certainly a long way from the coffee table breezeblock a lot of people seem to think makes a book of photography - but I actually find it a very pleasing size and format. Hoxton Press publish some really lovely stuff.

 

[Yithian]

It's certainly a long way from the coffee table breezeblock a lot of people seem to think makes a book of photography - but I actually find it a very pleasing size and format. Hoxton Press publish some really lovely stuff.

Agreed.

I was looking over their site earlier and admiring the generous previews.

 

[Yithian]

It's certainly a long way from the coffee table breezeblock a lot of people seem to think makes a book of photography - but I actually find it a very pleasing size and format. Hoxton Press publish some really lovely stuff.

You're right.

It's small, but well laid-out and it doesn't feel cramped. I'm very impressed with the images--the content but also the reproduction. The slides have been digitally photographed (not scanned) and retouched, but the editor has resisted the urge to pump up the saturation and the (well-kept) slides have an utterly plausible colouration--realistically muted. Perhaps another editorial decision taken in the selection from the thousands in the collection is that the human figures features are--with a few clear exceptions--incidental. The humanity of these run-down locales is largely implied by the objects, signs and markings left on the buildings and the quotidian activities they suggest.

Here's a preview for those wondering what the fuss is about.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

I love the way the bakers' shop in the last plate was still open for business! That Blitz-spirit survived into the Sixties!

Ridley Scott never used it. Funny that!

 

[Yithian]

I love the way the bakers' shop in the last plate was still open for business! That Blitz-spirit survived into the Sixties!

Ridley Scott never used it. Funny that!

Two Double Diamond signs found so far--makes me thirsty.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

makes me thirsty

I think Double Diamond, along with Watney's Red Barrel led to the founding of CAMRA. Not to preserve them! cheers: thumbsd:

I do still love the old trademarks and signage!

 

[Yithian]

I don't really collect poetry, and I have to admit that these are both reprints and I'd probably rather read Betjeman than Larkin, but there's something nice about a lean and tidy book of verse in a starchy jacket--all the mental woolliness trimmed away and only the distillation to imbibe.