New Treasure for My Booker Prize Collection

 

On my cruise vacation a couple of weeks ago I visited Commonwealth Books, a used and rare bookstore in downtown Boston. When I lived in Boston I was a regular here, and bought a lot of things like Angela Thirkell books and harder-to-find used fiction. It's a fun labryrinthy bookstore; they don't have an inventory system and good luck finding something specific, but you will find things you didn't know you needed for sure.

I was checking out their modern firsts shelf and came across a US first edition of Salman Rushdie's Booker Prize winner Midnight's Children in good condition (and pre-Booker state) for a low low price under $100. 

Normally I would not bother with a US first when there is an earlier British or other first edition (and with Booker winners before 2016 the first edition was rarely American) but true firsts of Midnight's Children go for $1,000 and up so that was never going to happen.

It may not be the true first but priced to sell as it was, it's the only first I'm ever going to have of this particular book so I'm pretty excited!

Vintage Science Fiction & Cataloging Fun

This is one of about 100 vintage science fiction paperbacks from the 1960s and 1970s that my husband received as a very generous gift from a family friend. Right now we're in the midst of cataloging them all on LibraryThing.com. If you're on LibraryThing you can find our collection here!  It's been really fun to take a look at all these books, many of them anthologies and many of them classics of the genre. Jeff has even been dipping into a few and reading them!

Jane Eyre Board Book Alert!

How cute is this? It's baby counting book based on Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. I bought it for my Jane Eyre collection. It counts from 1 to 10 using motifs from the book, like the four towers of Thornfield Hall for the number 4. It's written by Jennifer Adams and illustrated by Alison Oliver. Part of the BabyLit series, it's so sweet and perfect for Jane-ophiles everywhere.

You can find Alison Oliver's work at her website, pure-sugar.com, and more BabyLit books at the publisher's site here. Other books in the series include Alice in Wonderland, Pride and Prejudice and Romeo and Juliet. The books alone or in a set would be so nice for a baby shower gift or a 1 year old birthday. Adorable!

Sunday Salon- The Eye of the Hurricane

What a week. The new kitties are settling in, but mostly that means they're finding new places to hide every day and generally driving me crazy. Today we have to take one of them to the vet for a general check up- wish me luck! Yesterday we cleaned out my craft room and made it the cat room- got them all set up with their own quiet little space. I hope that helps them!  On Thursday Jeff and I got to go to the local premiere of the movie Gnomeo and Juliet; one of his clients was involved with the film and invited us. I wrote a review on my movie blog if you're interested.

Friday was my birthday and I got to see a bunch of friends and eat some cake, which is just about all you can ask for. Book-wise, my husband got me a vintage illustrated edition of Jane Eyre and a Folio Society edition of Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda, one of my favorite books. I also got a gift card for Barnes & Noble, which I spent on the complete DVD series of "Jeeves and Wooster" and the Everyman's Library edition of Giuseppe di Lampedusa's wonderful historical novel The Leopard. If you love Italy or Italian history, you have to read this magnificent novel and see Luchino Visconti's masterful film adaptation. Please!

Today? Today is all about relaxing and reading, I hope! I'm taking a creative-writing class and I need to read my fellow students' short stories, and work on my own, and I've got Enough About Love by Hervé Le Tellier to read, a bubbly literary romance perfect for Valentine's Day, and Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, which I'm enjoying. It's a quirky story about a quirky family and so far, a fun read. This month I'm reading 2011 releases and there are so many good-looking books to choose from. Too many, as always!

I'm also hoping to write some decent reviews and posts this week, and get back to commenting and reading other blogs; this past week I've been so preoccupied with the "kids" that everything else sort of took a back seat. So today I'll play catch-up on a bunch of things and try to just chill out a little, too.

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, I'd love to know what's your favorite literary love story. I'm reading mine- Jane Eyre- for Laura's readalong at her blog, Laura's Review Bookshelf. Oscar and Lucinda is another great one, albeit kind of twisted; A Very Long Engagement by Sebastien Japrisot is another; The End of the Affair, The English Patient, The Remains of the Day and Possession round out my favorites. What are yours?

More Sunday Salon here!

Sunday Salon-Full Swing with Christmas

This weekend was my husband's family's annual weekend getaway trip to Stockbridge, Mass., which they've done every year for the past 30 or so. We stay at the same inn and spend the weekend shopping, eating and getting into the holiday spirit. I'm home now, and we all had a great time.

There aren't a lot of bookstores out here; the Stockbridge Bookstore closed several years ago, but we managed to visit a few:

• The Bookloft (322 Stockbridge Road, Great Barrington) a nice indie specializing in new books,
• Berkshire Book Company (510 South Main Street
  Sheffield) of Sheffield, an excellent used-and-rare bookstore, and
• Yellow House Books (252 Main Street, Great Barrington) of Great Barrington, also a nice used-and-rare place.

We wanted to visit the very nice-looking North Star Books, a fancy-looking store where the used and rare books were stacked neatly on tidy shelves and everything looked precious and expensive, but I think they are an open-by-appointment kind of place. Oh well.

What did I buy? Not much. But I found a treasure- a first edition of Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle, for a price so low it's shameful. I mean, a yard-sale price, not a rare-bookstore price. The shop was having a 90% off sale. I actually felt bad about paying so little for it, like I should leave a 20 in the tip jar something. I have to start keeping track of what Atwood firsts I've collected because the shelf is getting full, yet I know I'm still missing a bunch. Anyone got a first of The Blind Assassin they don't want? I mean a Canadian or British first! LOL, I'm willing to negotiate on price.

And reading? I brought along David Grossman's To the End of the Land to read and I'm enjoying it. I've heard more than one person say that they gave up on it before finishing chapter one and I'm sorry to hear that because it changes dramatically after that first chapter. It moves forward in time and picks up. So if you're considering it, or if you've got it and you've started and you're not crazy about it, do me a favor and don't give up until, say, page 100. Give it a chance to grow on you because it just might. That said, Grossman's not for everybody and I can't really blame you if you decide he's not for you.

That's it for me. I hope you're having a great Sunday.

More Sunday Salon here.

Boston's North Shore- A Used Bookstore Tour

Just about the only thing I enjoy more than fried seafood in summertime is finding a new bookstore. Last week, my husband and I decided to take a day and do some book shopping. Big surprise, right? Well, instead of hitting our favorite indies or checking out the new big-box chain, we decided to drive up to Cape Ann, on Boston's north shore, to visit four new-to-us used bookstores. After a delicious lunch of fried clams at the magnificent Clam Box (246 High St., Ipswich, Mass.), we headed to nearby Rowley and the fun Broken In Books (317 Haverhill St., Rowley, Mass.). Broken In Books stocks a great mix of used paperbacks and hardcovers in most genres; you can find neatly organized shelves and piles of new arrivals and random things, as well as glass-cased collectibles and rarities. I browsed the craft section while Jeff got a first edition of a David Eddings book, The Demon Lord of Karanda. After a pleasant time at Broken In Books, we headed off to Middleton and Hand It Back Book Smyth (240 S. Main St., Middleton, Mass.), a smaller strip-mall bookstore. But don't let the size fool you. Hand It Back Book Smyth is stocked wall-to-wall with all the books you could want. The plentiful and well-organized sections for romance novels and science fiction got my attention at first, but a little wander lead me to their nice selection of general fiction. You can spend a good long time among their generous offerings. Once you're done here, head over to Richardson's Ice Cream (156 S. Main St., Rte 114, Middleton, Mass.) for one of their legendary cones. Once we had enjoyed one cone of pineapple coconut ice cream (me) and one of German chocolate cake (Jeff), it was time to head up to Manchester-by-the-Sea for what turned out to be my favorite bookstore of the day, Manchester By the Book (27 Union St., Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass.). All I can say is, wow. Lately I've found myself collecting Margaret Atwood first editions and this remarkable store full to the brim with rare and collectible volumes had an entire shelf of them. And they had a beautiful Folio Society edition of Jane Eyre, and all very reasonable. I came home with the Jane Eyre, two Canadian Atwood firsts (Wilderness Tips and Bodily Harm), one British first (The Robber Bride) and a British first edition of A.S. Byatt's Angels and Insects. It wasn't the cheapest bookstore run ever, but it wasn't that bad, all told, and I found some real treasures without even getting past the B section. We went out to the picturesque seaside town of Gloucester for our final bookstore of the day, the Dogtown Book Shop (132 Main St., Gloucester, Mass.) Dogtown has a respectable collection of used fiction but it seemed to me that its real strength is in nonfiction, especially nautical and local history. Dogtown also has a lot of really rare and valuable old books, cased in of course, as well as an interesting collection of old cookbooks and art history. I spent all my money in Manchester by the Book so while I did enjoy a nice browse, I didn't end up buying anything here. But I did discover four great new bookstores, all of which I'm sure I'll be visiting again!

Mini Bookstore Tour of Seattle

This past weekend I had to make a brief trip to Seattle, Washington, for a business meeting; beforehand, I had an afternoon to wander around the city and of course, check out their wonderful bookstores.

I only made it to five of their many bookstores but they were all great.

I started out by asking the concierge at my hotel for a good independent bookstore; he directed me to Arundel Books (1001 1st Ave. at Madison), which describes itself as "new, used & rare books for readers & collectors." Sounds about right!

It's a charming shop offering everything from the latest bestsellers to old copies of Dickens and regional specialties to self-produced books published under its own moniker. I bought Pretty is Hard: Poems About Shoes, Chocolate and Best Friends by Veronica Markey. I read some of the poems in the store and figured I had to buy the book!

Next, I asked the cashier at Arundel where to go next, and he directed me to Wessel and Lieberman (208 First Avenue South), a rare and collectible bookshop in the heart of Seattle's Pioneer Square. Their books were pretty and pricey, and I didn't think I was going to get anything, until I stumbled into to the back room and found a signed first edition of Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace. I think I'm collecting Margaret Atwood firsts now!

I wandered around Pioneer Square for a while longer, and just as I was on my way out I walked by the intriguing Seattle Mystery Bookshop (113 Cherry Street) tucked away on a side street. I almost missed it- I was crossing the street and only saw it because I looked behind me.

In addition to its impressive mystery holdings, this store also stocks thrillers and suspense, and it's bigger than it looks from the outside. I got the Akashic Press anthology Moscow Noir, as well as a sweatshirt for my husband. As part of their anniversary promotion, they let me take two free galleys as well! How fun is that?

Not really a bookstore but deserving of mention is the incredible, impressive Seattle Public Library (Central Branch- 1000 Fourth Avenue). I headed over there next to meet up with Phil of King Rat's Reading.
Wow! What a place. A gorgeous, ten-story building that would feel at home in the middle of MIT, it's also clearly a haven for bibliophiles. On a Saturday afternoon I saw hundreds of folks reading, chatting, eating and enjoying themselves. There was a cafe, a gift shop and lots of places to read, use computers, do research and more. I took a few minutes to relax myself!

Phil and I headed over to the Capitol Hill neighborhood, home to nightclubs, great restaurants and eclectic shopping of all kinds. But we focused on the bookish kind, naturally. Phil took me to the legendary Elliot Bay Book Company (1521 10th Ave.), recently moved from its old home in Pioneer Square. This is an indie bookstore the way indie bookstores should be- large, cavernous and housing just about everything. Loved it! I picked up Robert Littell's novel The Stalin Epigram.

But we definitely saved the best for last. After dinner we went over to the amazing Pilot Books (Upstairs, 219 Broadway E) , a tiny boutique bookstore in a small shopping mall. Specializing in independent and small press books, their small but carefully-edited selection is perfect for the discriminating bibliophile looking for something truly special and hard-to-find. Phil found that they carry books from an Indian publisher which he'd previously had to look far and wide to find, and I came home with an armload of stuff including a graphic novel (Ruts & Gullies: Nine Days in St. Petersburg by Philippe Girard) and two novels (Ergo by Jakov Lind and The Russian Lover, actually a collection of stories by Jana Martin) as well as a little zine produced by Pilot and written by a woman from Massachusetts! I wish I could clone Pilot Books and put it in my neighborhood in Cambridge. It would fit right in!

After that it was time to call it a day. But what a day! I can't wait to come back to this beautiful, fun city sometime soon!

Sunday Salon- Bookhounding in Boston

So yesterday my husband and I stopped by a favorite bookstore we haven't visited in about a year, Seek Books, in West Roxbury, a neighborhood of Boston. It's a used bookstore that specializes in science fiction and fantasy. It only opened about a year ago and we visited last summer but for some reason haven't gotten around to going back.

My husband collects a series of Stephen King novels, The Gunslinger, that were published as limited special editions; until yesterday he was only missing the first of the series' seven volumes, which, yes, he found for a great price. He also found a pile of the Doctor Who paperbacks he collects, including some choose-your-own-adventure Doctor Who books he didn't even know existed. He was so excited! Later in the day I found my own little treasure, a first edition of Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye, at a nearby charity shop.

Seek Books has this incredible collection of scifi for two reasons- it's run by a bona vide nerd who said he built the kind of bookstore he would want to shop in, and because he has a policy of only stocking one copy of each title for maximum selection.

Today we're going back to make sure he got all the Doctor Who books he's missing. Should be fun.

Reading? I started J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace last night and can't wait to get back to it. It's a Booker Prize winner and so far, I'm not surprised. It's incredible!

I'm also getting ready for a busy week of work, including my first author interview over the phone on Tuesday, and a lot of posting for BEA week. I'll have a giveaway connected to Armchair BEA and lots of other great content for while I'm away.

I hope to see lots of you in New York!

You can read more Sunday Salon here.

Friday Finds- A Short Stack, and a Special Treat

In the short stack we have: Dovid Bergelson's collection of short stories, The Shadows of Berlin. Bergelson was considered one of the pre-eminent Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union; Stalin had him killed for it. My husband picked up this City Lights publication for me on his trip to San Francisco last week. Paul Harding's Tinkers just won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I got it at Porter Square Books in Cambridge. Magda Szabo's novel The Door intrigued me after I heard about it on the Almost Insider blog. It came to me via Bookmooch. And seriously, if you love European literary fiction, you have to start following this fantastic blog. Stendhal's On Love, in a beautiful Hesperus Press paperback edition, came via LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program. The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott was almost lost to me; I was supposed to get it for review back in March, but it got lost in the mail and the publicist rushed me another copy. Thank you! I started reading it already and I'm really enjoying it. And my special treat? A first edition of Vladimir Nabokov's Despair. I found this ex-library copy at the wonderful Lorem Ipsum, a used bookstore in Inman Square, Cambridge, for a very reasonable price. I don't think I ever imagined I would own any first-edition Nabokov, so I am over the moon to have found this little treasure. I read Despair on my big college Nabokov kick, when for a summer I would go back and forth from the Harvard Coop every so often to read my way through his novels. To be honest I don't remember much about it but I'm really looking forward to reacquainting myself with it. Yippee! What are you thrilled to have found this week? You can find more Friday Finds at ShouldbeReading.wordpress.com.

Sunday Salon - Lots of Bookish Stuff Going on in Boston

Every Sunday I come here and write about a book I'm reading today or planning on reading today, and every Sunday I almost never read, or read very little. Maybe today will be different, but I don't know. I'm still working my way through Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America, which I want very much to like. So far? Eh. I'll keep plugging away though. I'm going to make another attempt to start Olga Slavnikova's 2017, which I have to read for LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program. I've tried a couple of times now, and have never got past the second page. It's been a busy week- it seems like every springtime there's one week when every reading I want to attend takes place, and I just get to as many as I can. After the Newburyport Literary Festival last weekend, this past week local appearances were made by Peter Carey, Alina Bronsky, Helen Simonson and Atiq Rahimi, and I got to the first and last of those; my book club met the night Bronsky was here, and Simonson and Rahimi were appearing the same day and I couldn't get to both. I'm going to have more to say about the Rahimi event later in the week- it was one of the best book talks I've been to in a long time. Yesterday and Friday was also the Boston Antiquarian Book Fair, held over at Boston University. I spent a fun hour or so browsing among the exhibits. To be honest, there was almost nothing that I was interested in buying, although I did have a great conversation with a Canadian bookseller (and fellow Margaret Atwood fan) about which books are and aren't collectible. One question was on the commercial viability of personalized signed books. I said I thought they were worthless and she said no, to some collectors they're more valuable because they show the human touch. I get books signed and personalized because I'm a fan, not because I'm trying to build up some fortune in collectible books, but I still appreciated hearing that. My husband came home with some treasures- some books on Roman history he was interested in. So between that and my chat with the Canadian bookseller, it was a fun day. We saw lots of neat things- collectible children's books, various editions of Alice in Wonderland- including one signed by Lewis Carroll for about $2,500- but not one Jane Eyre in the whole room. Oh well. Someone was selling a nice set of Jane Austens, though. But I don't collect those. I've also been sewing a little again lately. Here's my cat on a quilt I'm making for him. I'm not done with it yet, but it's nice to know it's already kitty-approved: Hope you're having a relaxing Sunday too. More Sunday Salon can be found here.

Collecting: A New Edition of JANE EYRE

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about collecting books, and mentioned that I have a small collection of different editions of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. At the time my collection was only four copies and I'd just acquired the fourth, an inexpensive illustrated edition I found at a local used book store (second from the bottom in the picture below):

Well, a week and a half ago or so I read this post, about five British publishers designing and producing beautiful editions of classic books, and I discovered another lovely edition of Jane Eyre, published by White's Books.

It's really a pretty thing, cloth bound with lovely endpapers,
and printed on thick, nice-quality acid-free paper. The line from White's also includes Jane Austen's Emma and Pride and Prejudice, as well as a handful other titles. You can see the full list here. Their website will link to Waterstone's online store but you can buy them through many online booksellers.

While we're on the subject of hardcover special editions, and hardcovers generally, I encourage you to read and comment at this great post, which the great Ann Kingman tweeted about on Friday: it's right here, at the Northshire Bookstore's blog.

I love this copy of Jane Eyre and for $30 it's a great addition to my collection; I think any of these books would be wonderful to include in your home library or to give to the book lover in your life. I wish I knew more people who loved the classics because then I'd have an excuse to buy more of these beautiful books!

Do You Collect Books?

I read a lot of books, and I buy a lot of books, but I never really thought seriously about collecting books per se. I mean, I've collected the occasional series, manga especially, but I've never really collected just to collect.

Awhile ago, I saw the movie "Definitely, Maybe," which featured a character who collected various editions of Jane Eyre, because she loved the book and because she was looking for a particular lost volume of her own, given to her by her late father. I loved this nerdy, bookish touch in an otherwise by-the-numbers romantic comedy and it reminded me that for a while when I was a teenager I had my own collection of old copies of Jane Eyre. It was my favorite novel (still is) and although my collection reached a grand total of three copies I still treasure those books.

(The week after I saw the movie, I saw a pretty illustrated edition of Jane Eyre on sale for cheap at a local used bookstore and now I have four!)

As I was setting up my new home office over the past few days, I noticed that I've developed a little collection of signed books- about 50 so far- that would be nice to gather together on the bookcase I have in the room. I organized them alphabetically and they look nice! I'm sure I'll continue to add to that little collection as time goes on.

When I attended ReaderCon this past summer, I went to a session on collecting, starring a man who's collected hardcover first editions of every Hugo Award winner. He talked about the thrill of the chase, dealing with ex-library copies and other pitfalls and pleasures of collecting. I thought it was funny but then he sort of inspired me, and I thought about starting a collection of first editions of Booker Prize winners, since I love the Booker Prize. Some quick searches on online showed that, apart from a few early winners that cost in the hundreds, it's actually a relatively accessible collection to start, with many winners available for under $50 in good-quality condition. I have a few- I have Wolf Hall, The Blind Assassin and Possession, and I actually bought another the other day, Life of Pi, in anticipation of an upcoming local event with Yann Martel.

What do you think? Do you collect books? Do you want to?