more updated listings

It's been slower going than I hoped getting things cataloged, with all the distractions and my poor work habits. I think I will post these in increments of five, instead of one at a time (especially if all I have to show for whole day is one or two listings).

Here now the latest stab at revised and updated listings:

GAUNTLET: Exploring the Limits of Free Expression #2, '91, (Stephen King Special; Ray Bradbury, Piers Anthony, David Wojnarowicz, Andrew Vachss, Graham Masterton; "Top Ten Censors of 1990, MPAA Exposed, 2 Live Crew, Kiddie Porn; Recommended for mature adults; 402 pages), perfectbound, vg $8; as new 15.00

McAuley, Paul J. WHITE DEVILS, Simon & Schuster UK, 2nd, (hard-edged near-future biotech thriller; thought-provoking heart-stopping white-knuckle ride; 521 pages), vg-f in dj 12.00

Lobdell, Jared THE WORLD OF THE RINGS: Language, Religion, and Adventure in Tolkien, Open Court '04, 1st, (classics study, here revised and expanded; eccentric and compelling), f $15

Smith, Clark Ashton THE LAST OBLIVION: Best Fantastic Poems of..., Hippocampus ('02), 1st edn, (includes glossary of unusual words and names; S.T. Joshi & David E. Schultz [eds]; 194 pages), new 15.00 

NOVA EXPRESS #19, spr-sum/00 (Volume 5, Number 3), (Neil Gaiman interview Part 1; Russell Blackford on Greg Egan, Patrick O'Leary Fails to Analyze Gene Wolfe, Nick Gevers on Paul J. McAuley's Confluence; more) •---#21, spr-sum/01, (interview with Tim Powers; reviews; more), new 4.00 [listed at $2 on biblio because I have a hefty number of these on hand - I'll be happy to honor that price; also, I'm sure I have a similar number of #20 too, but there's only one copy right here beside me, so I won't re-list it in earnest now, but I could maybe be prevailed upon to mount an expedition for it]

updated listings

Updated listings (with links added):

Lupoff, Pat & Dick Lupoff THE BEST OF XERO, Tachyon, 7/04, 1st edn, (an array of highlights from Hugo-winning fanzine published between 1960 and 1962; Roger Ebert intro), new in dj 29.95

[30% discount]

LITTLE LULUª: Lulu Goes Shopping, Dark Horse, 11/04, 1st edn, (reprints issues six through twelve in Dark Horse's complete run of John Stanley and Irving Tripp's legendary Little Lulu comics), f 12.00

further re-cataloging

Catalog listing update:

Di Filippo, Paul THE STEAMPUNK TRILOGY, Four Walls Eight Windows, 4/95, 1st, (collects Victoria, Hottentots & Walt and Emily; invests history with a cockeyed verisimilitude; set in the very alternative 19th century; 352 pages), as new (but about vg-f) in dj 20.00

---now down to my last copy -- new but not perfect (unread - probably a bookstore return but not a remainder.

forward listings

Revised listings with links to covershots:

Forward, Robert L. DRAGON'S EGG, Del Rey, 5/80, 1st edn, (author's first novel; one of a handful of books that stretch the mind), vg-f in dj 20.00

Forward, Robert L. STARQUAKE, Del Rey, 10/85, 1st edn, SIGNED by author, (hard SF; sequel to Dragon's Egg), vg-f in dj 20.00

---I also still have a nice pair of the above, both SIGNED, vg-f in djs 50.00

book listing

New listing of used book (whoopie!):

St Martin's Minotaur 96864 Hess, Joan STRANGLED PROSE, 5th, (A Claire Malloy Mystery; Is killing a romance novelist considered a crime of passion?), vg-f 2.00

---Pretty sad this is all I could get done today. 

further revised listings

Revised listings:

O'Neill, Gene THE BURDEN OF INDIGO, Prime ('02), POD edn, (sf/fantasy/horror tale of the search for salvation; After an economic/ecologic collapse, the Shields along the coast of  Cal Wild cast out their criminals and malcontents to wander the dangerous wastelands), as new $20

O'Neill, Gene GHOSTS, SPIRITS, COMPUTERS AND WORLD MACHINES, Prime ('01), POD edn, (horror stories by the best kept secret in horror fiction; introduction by Kim Stanley Robinson; Scott Edelman afterword), new 15.00

O'Rourke, Monica J. SUFFER THE FLESH, Prime ('02), POD edn, (horror novel; Zoey Masterton didn't know what pain was before, but she's learning fast), new 15.00

Womack, Jack LET'S PUT THE FUTURE BEHIND US, Grove Press, 4/97, 1st pb edn, (one of the most cannily on-target accounts yet about the helter-skelter fast lane of life in the New Russia), vg 7.50 ---although I think I have this listed as a "new" copy elsewhere -- it sure looks new; came from someone who was a heavy smoker whose books stank, so that was the chief demerit; by now, quite a bit later, the book has lost the aroma.

recataloging Xgau's 90's Consumer Guide

I'm recataloging my Xgau's 90's Consumer Guide, which I have one new copy of left now after today. So I'm on its Amazon site, and am bemused (actually amused almost to the extent of spewing my wine all over the keyboard) by one reviewer:

• I'll never forget what he once said about Waylon Jennings ("Reminds us that he has balls by singing as though someone were squeezing them")
• I wish he weren't such a sucker for world music, much of which, in my opinion, would be dismissed as pablum if it weren't for the exotic veneer.
• It's supposed to be a consumer guide, not a flight manual.
• Deduct 2 stars for form, but credit 1 back because it's important to keep Christgau's brand of crankiness alive. Four stars.

This reviewer (same one?) seems to make the same confusion of the words obtuse with abstruse that Allmusic makes in their assessment of Xgau. "Dim, slow-witted" are not attributes I would apply to Xgau, probably not even into his twilight years -- still a ways away from current evidence.

The listing now:

Christgau, Robert CONSUMER GUIDE: Albums of the '90s, St. Martin's Griffin, 10/00, 1st edn, (ever-open-eared, mercilessly rigorous; essential; the dean of American rock critics tackles the decade when music exploded; over 3,800 reviews), as new 20.00

need titles!

Looks like I need to have titles to posts to have them show up in the feed at my main bookselling blog.

Lots of things I still need to catch up on

Lots of things I still need to catch up on, but what do I ever do? Things that never seem to do much to fulfill my obligations. Now today, coming up on the holiday, my mandate is to get all the stacks of books and boxes of books that I brought upstairs when the water heater sprang a leak took back down to the cellar. I was hoping to grab this chance to get things organized better, maybe get some of the boxed books cataloged, maybe re-catalog the loose books -- and get them listed on the sites where much of my bookselling now happens (amazon, biblio.com, and half.com). But a couple weeks later, I've made scant progress. Still, if I could just keep plugging away, even though things might continue to slide downhill, at least some good things might keep happening. Maybe it's the autist in me, but I find that when I get started on something, I do tend to keep doing that thing, not necessarily to completion but certainly to the exclusion of other things, including higher-priority things. The process of making book listings is not very time-friendly. All the steps in the process do gobble up the time, as any Internet user can relate to I'm sure.
 But I better get started, here are some listing revisions for today:

Drew, Wayland THE ERTHRING CYCLE, SFBC, nd (code Q35 on p656), (3-in-1 omnibus edn; collects The Memoirs of Alcheringia, The Gaian Expedient & The Master of Norriya; 659 pages), vg+ in dj 6.00 [10%]

Yolen, Jane SISTER EMILY'S LIGHTSHIP and Other Stories, Tor, 8/01, (twenty-eight magical tales, including three written especially for this collection and two Nebula Award winners), new 13.95 [30% discount still, but I'm thinking about dropping it to 25% or even dropping it entirely -- most of my "new" books (i.e. uncirculated and as received from mass-market publishers) are pushing a decade or more old now. Amazon give better discounts than I can on current books, and by now the older books can be had for next to nothing from their sellers, including me, but sometimes, if you want a book preserved in actual new condition from earlier days, maybe a 30% discount from the original selling price might be going a bit too far] 

Lorrah, Jean BLOOD WILL TELL, BenBella, 4/03, (winner of the Lord Ruthven Award for Best Vampire Novel and also winner of the LORIE Award for Best Paranormal Romance), new 14.95 

Wilson, F. Paul ALL THE RAGE, Forge, 10/00, 1st trade edn, (first published in a limited edition by Gauntlet Press; Repairman Jack novel; sequel to The Tomb), new in dj 25.95 

Olsen, Lance FREAKNEST, Wordcraft of Oregon, 9/00, 1st edn, (feral children, illicit nano-drugs, false memories, televisual consciousness, Dickensian 2023 London), new $12

two revised book listings

Revised listings:

Lumley, Brian HAGGOPIAN and Other Stories, Subterranean '08, 1st edn, "Deluxe Hardcover Edition" SIGNED by author and by cover artist Bob Eggleton, (Best Mythos Tales, Volume 2; 424 pages), as new in dj 50.00

Wilson, F. Paul THE HAUNTED AIR, Forge, 10/02, 1st edn, (A Repairman Jack Novel), new in dj 24.95

link to my biblio listings

I figured out how to view my biblio.com listings by "most recently added."

Updated catalog entries

Updated catalog entries today (with links added):

Wisman, Ken WEIRD FAMILY TALES I & II, Dark Regions '95, 1st, (a journal of familial maledictions; Pete Crowther intros; 47+47 pages bound dos-à-dos), as new 8.00

O'Leary, Patrick THE IMPOSSIBLE BIRD, Tor, 3/03, (There is a place—a world—where famine and poverty do not exist. Nor sickness nor misery nor unhappiness of any kind. Is it Heaven? As two brothers are about to discover, it’s more like Hell), {hc is still available @ $25.95}, trade pb, new 14.95 [30%]

GAUNTLET: Exploring the Limits of Free Expression #12, '96, (Natural Born Tiller: Harrelson Hawks Hemp, Wenatchee Witch Hunt: Child Abuse or Political Posturing?, Recovered Memories: Convictions Come Crumbling Down, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, more; 112 pages), new 9.95

---#13, '97, (Political Correctness Suffers a Setback; Murder By the Book: The Controversy over Hit Man, Andrei Codrescu on Romania's Made-for-Television Revolution; Banning Beetle Bailey) • ---#14, '97, (Porn in the USA 2; Al Goldstein on the cowardice of the porn industry; Amateur Porn: The New Wave; Dworkin & Mackinnon Conquer Canada; The Future of Porn on the Internet; S/M: An alternative you can live with; etc., etc. etc.; 128 pages), new, each 6.95

Speaking of covershots, a couple weeks ago I added a set of mostly-vintage paperbacks that turned up when our water heater sprang a leak and I had to move a bunch of books out of harms way. This box got pretty wet but it looks like the books survived without too much damage. At least they were still ready for their close-ups. Don't know when I will ever get them cataloged. One, though -- Flower People, listed yesterday -- didn't fit in their new box, so it is listed. (Pandora's has it for $195 on Amazon!)

revised listings with added links

A bunch of books had to be moved out of the way to put in a new water heater (in the center of the cellar), so I have a few of them here beside me. I've added links and perhaps expanded or revised descriptions/prices on a few of the books already, but I've only now decided it might be a good idea to add them to the blog as they occur. I'll just put them in this subsidiary "notes" blog, though. I really should come up with more posts for the main blog too. But meanwhile, here's the latest revised listings with added link to covershots:

Wilder, Cherry DEALERS IN LIGHT AND DARKNESS, Edgewood ('95), (1st), (complexly achieved short stories with a wry mythopoeic vein; an unusual and worthwhile collection; 166 pages), new 9.00

Lannes, Roberta THE MIRROR OF NIGHT, Silver Salamander '97, one of 500 perfectbound SIGNED copies (860 total), (horror stories; don't buy this book for Harlan Ellison's intro), as new 18.00

Wilcox, Don & David V. Reed THE WHISPERING GORILLA Plus RETURN OF THE WHISPERING GORILLA, Gryphon, 3/99, 1st edn, (first world book publication of a science fiction legend!; from Fantastic Adventures, 5/40 & 2/43; Philip Harbottle intro), as new $20

Wisman, Ken WEIRD FAMILY TALES III: Maledictio Redux, Dark Regions '99, 1st, (strange and supernatural stories of family members), as new 8.00

As I deal with more books, I will copy their listings to here. Of course, you can find them all here too.

working on links

Despite the fact that there are several far more pressing things I ought to be doing (I'm talking to you, e-mailer), I'm bogged down just now trying to redo the links to other documents in my various catalog-data pages. I would have thought that a simple copy and paste would get the job done, but for some reason the links get stripped out of the text when I do this. So I'm going through them and methodically doing them by hand. Best to go ahead and get it done, before I forget how (although there had to be a better way.)

netbook musings

I've been doing the update on my catalog listings that Google Documents offers. This allows me to make them look more like they did in my old paper catalogs (e.g. hanging indents -- but I haven't figured out how to do a tab leader yet). For fun I picked up a little Windows netbook a couple weeks ago, to kind of see what it is like for Windows people to do stuff. All along I've always used Macs. The netbook might be fine once I get used to it, but so far: headache after headache. Right now, when I try to go to any of my Document links (for catalog entries), only the first window pane or so gets loaded. I had kind of wondered what it must be like for slower connections or PC users to try to view these links, thinking it might be better if I broke them up into smaller units, but if I had my druthers the whole thing would be in one Document file. There are limits to how big a file you can upload, though. I figured I'd go with as big of files as I could get away with, hopefully leaving room for some future expansion, to avoid having to jump around from place to place looking for things.
Anyway, the updated versions of the documents do seem to take a while to load up, and even on my Macbook the search function doesn't seem to go to listings I might be looking for, although I can scroll down, unlike with this netbook -- which only seems to get so far before it stops. Well, I still only have the Windows Starter system installed. Maybe with an upgrade to the Home Premium everything will work the way I think it should.

batch of books from book sale

If anyone is curious, here's where you can see the books I picked up at the Planned Parenthood Book Sale in Des Moines yesterday:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cdrummbks/sets/72157626251697807/show/
It's anyone's guess when any of these might ever be cataloged -- I've become more of a hoarder than anything else. A lot of them I bought because I thought I'd like to read them myself (the especially worthless ones).

email from Sarob

Email rec'd:

Hi Chris

 Sarob Press is pleased to announce details of our Spring (April) 2011 title as follows.

Mark Nicholls: Dark Shadows Fall

Dr Nicholls is the President and Librarian at St John's College, Cambridge – surely a terrific place to soak in the atmosphere of centuries and quietly dream up tales of delicious and rather pleasing terror. Previously published in Ghosts & Scholars, All Hallows, Supernatural Tales, Enigmatic Tales and Black Rose, this is Mark's first collection of ghost stories. Here are 12 traditional tales, some Jamesian, some antiquarian, all ghostly and all dark and icily chilling.  Afterword by Mark Nicholls. Illustrations by Paul Lowe.   Limited Edition Hardcover. Printed Boards. Edition limited to 150 numbered copies.  Limitation will be reviewed if pre-publication interest suggests a larger print run is appropriate.

BOOK PRICE

UK: UK £20 

Europe: 25 euros

USA & Rest of World: US $35

Full details at http://sarobpress.blogspot.com

I hope to hear from you shortly.

Cheers, Robert.

---I will be getting this in. The previous Sarob title I've had here for a while, but I've been neglectful about getting it listed. In fact, only just yesterday I managed this:

Ward, C.E. SEVEN GHOSTS AND ONE OTHER, Sarob '10, Limited "Numbered" Edition, one of 200 copies, (author's long-awaited second ghost story collection; eight Jamesian tales include two new long and previously unpublished supernatural stories and the authorised completion of M.R. James' unfinished “The Game of Bear”), as new no dj as issued (pictorial boards) 40.00

---The slight bump up in price is owing to the fact that it is sold out at the publisher, and to allow for the 10% discount I give.