Q or today’s thrift store (not a used book) score
I had to run a couple of errands this afternoon, some more urgent than others, and Finn decided to go along for the ride. While we were out, we stopped at the thrift store, and we both found some good books, and I found these really cool Star Trek mugs. I am having fun getting to hang out with Finn, and even though I am worn out from the long night I had last night, I am having a good day.
shhhhh…don’t tell finn
It is a pre-war flat top Corona “Silent”. There are a couple of small dings in the lacquer, and it needs to be cleaned up a little, but it is a beautiful typewriter that works well. She loves typing on my Smith-Corona “Clipper”, so I think she is going to like having a typewriter of her own.
cast off the wracking
A Bosun’s Chair rigged to be lowered with assistance from below (a) or by one’s self (b,c) as illustrated in Handbook of Knots and Splices (and other work with hempen and wire ropes) by Charles E. Gibson, 1961. This copy, a recent thrift store used book score, was previously part of the collection of the US Forces Special Services Library, Barenhausen Kasserne. This illustration is part of my favorite chapter of the book, Slinging, Lashing, and Seizing, which also includes beautiful instructions for lifting, moving, and lowering barrels with ropes.
While the Bosun’s Chair instructions focus on the techniques for lowering and raising the chair alone or with the assistance of others, it neglects any discussion of the fixed point from which one is suspended. How can one find a fixed point dependable enough to support a life? How does one deal with the moment (b) when that point moves out of sight and one finds one’s self suspended between the no longer and the not yet seen?
Despite these shortcomings, it is an excellent book and a welcome addition to the mumblelard family library.
…and high in the middle
I found this Evergreen Edition, collecting four short pieces by Samuel Beckett, at a thrift store that is not on my usual circuit. I have been there before, and it is not a great thrift store for books or anything else, but every once in a while I will go back.
This recent thrift store used book score contains the short play, Ohio Impromptu, which was written by Beckett to be performed during the 1981 Beckett Festival at the land grant diploma mill that I may or may not have attended many years ago. The play draws some of its inspiration from his time as James Joyce’s secretary but also from Beckett’s lifelong insomnia, night terrors, and panic attacks. Somehow I had never heard of this play until earlier this year, and I have never found Beckett in a thrift store before; it is uncanny that this volume would be the first.
Nothing is left to tell.
it grows and changes and expands; our universe does this and so too the multiverse…
A recent thrift store used book score included this old AD&D 1st edition manual and a whole stack of D&D 3rd edition manuals. Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition is notable for the introduction of the Open Game License which made it possible for third party companies to enhance and expand on the rules established in the core rulebooks.
When I was young, my pentecostal parents didn’t allow me to play D&D, but I did manage to briefly sneak an obscure science fiction variant, Gamma World, past them. Delayed adolescent rebellion may or may not have contributed to my purchase of the set, but the sale of Unearthed Arcana will more than cover the cost of all of the books. I don’t usually buy books to sell, but this one will make someone happy. I am not sure what I am going to do with the rest of them yet. Would it be wrong to teach my daughters to play?
Here is the complete list of books in the set that I found:
- Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Unearthed Arcana by Gary Gygax. This is an AD&D 1st edition book. All the rest are D&D 3rd edition.
- Dungeons & Dragons: Player’s Handbook (Core Rulebook I)
- Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Master’s Handbook (Core Rulebook II)
- Dungeons & Dragons: Monster Manual (Core Rulebook III)
- Dungeons & Dragons: Monster Manual II
- Dungeons & Dragons: Psionics Handbook
- Dungeons & Dragons: Manual of the Planes
- Dungeons & Dragons: Tome and Blood, a Guidebook to Wizards and Sorcerers
- Dungeons & Dragons: Sword and Fist, a Guidebook to Fighters and Monks
- Dungeons & Dragons: Defenders of the Faith, a Guidebook to Clerics and Paladins
- Dungeons & Dragons: Song and Silence, a Guidebook to Bards and Rogues
- Guilds (a third party extension to the D&D third edition open gaming system)
- Swords & Sorcery: Creature Collection (a third party extension)
- Ultimate Prestige Classes, Vol.1 (a third party extension)
the parable of the egg
Watch the hell out for smoking milk bottles!
This week’s kick-ass thrift store used book scores include:
- Secrets of 123 Classic Science Tricks and Experiments by Edi Lanners (published by TAB BOOKS Inc., 1981) Despite what the beautifully laid out cover photographs would lead you to believe, this book is entirely illustrated by 19th century French (and a few German) xylographs. My favorite experiment names, independent of other factors, include: The Camphor Boat, The Electric Walnut, An Inexpensive Trombone, and The Patient Impaled.
- Bourbon, Straight: the Uncut and Unfiltered Story of American Whiskey by Charles K. Cowdery (published by Made and Bottled in Kentucky, 2004). This book appears to be self-published by Charles under the Made and Bottled in Kentucky imprint which is paradoxically based in Chicago. This book has a chapter titled, “Fall from Grace; the History of Old Crow,” so it wins a permanent place in the mumblelard family library (probably next to Mountain Spirits by Joseph Earl Dabney, but maybe it should go up with Guinea Pig Zero by Robert Helms and Pills-A-Go-Go by Jim Hogshire even though it isn’t a zine compilation; there is a backlog in the cataloging process.) Cowdery’s web presence, and peer evaluations place him in the upper echelons of bourbon otaku, so I am thrilled with this find.
- Mountain People, Mountain Crafts by Elinor Lander Horwitz (1974). The mountain people of the title are more specifically southern Appalachian highlanders. I want to keep it, but its chapters on Appalachian banjo and dulcimer luthiers make it a good christmas gift for my brother.
- Peterson First Guides: Reptiles and Amphibians by Roger Conant, Robert C. Stebbins, and Joseph T. Collins.
- Pirates: Fact & Fiction by David Cordingly and John Falconer (1992). A good resource for the skull girls.
- The Worst-case Scenario Survival Handbook by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht. This book was a phenomenon ten years ago. It will surely tickle some thrill-seeking, ass-kicking little girls.
- How to Hold a Crocodile by The Diagram Group (Firefly Books Ltd., London, 2004) This appears to be a presentation piece or demonstration portfolio for a group of London illustrators. Its eclectic compilation of illustrated facts include: “How to read boustrophedon writing,” “How to identify the Queen of England’s swans,” “How to eat winkles,” and “How to play Nine Men’s Morris.”
- Schott’s Sporting, Gaming, & Idling Miscellany by Ben Schott. I love Schott’s Original Miscellany, but I have been leery of the spin-off miscellanies focused on sports and food. My wariness was misplaced because this is an amusing little book.
- Mammoth Cave by John J. Wagoner and Lewis D. Cutliff with photography by Chip Clark (Published by Interpretive Publications for Eastern National Park & Monument Association, 1985) This is an over-sized pamphlet of the type you might buy in the Mammoth Cave gift shop. Lewis Cutliff started working at Mammoth Cave in 1956. Caves are awesome, and Mammoth Cave is sublime.
Things I put back because I was going over my weekly budget (comments are enabled for expressions of disgust or relief):
- Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. It was a book club edition, but it was a hardcover with the original cover art. If this is still there, I will probably buy it this week.
- Trying to Save Piggy Sneed by John Irving. A collection of the very few short stories he has published, a few short autobiographical pieces, and other stuff. There were actually two copies of this, hardcovers in great shape, but his short stories frustrated me when I tried to read them before.
- Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut. A paperback collection of short stories from 1968.
…let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts
This week’s thrift store used book scores include:
- The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments by George Johnson. He is a New York Times science writer, but I think these are original essays for this book. I really enjoyed the Ramachandran article in the New Yorker and its focus on his use of mundane materials and thought experiments in his current work; this looks to be a fun history of this tradition of tabletop experiments.
- Ideas and Opinions by Albert Einstein. Collected popular writings.
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experienc of mystery—even if mixed with fear—that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds—it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity; in this sense and in this alone, I am deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature. -Albert Einstein
- A Brief History of Time by Stephen W. Hawking. I have not read this in a long time. We had a copy at one point but it has been lost to time and the disruptions of interstate moves.
- Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond.
- Tutankhamen by Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, published by New York Graphic Society, 1978. This will be an ninth birthday present for a Tut obsessed neighbor girl.
the lazarus effect by frank herbert and bill ransom
I found this at the thrift store this week, but I am really looking for the previous book in the Pandora Sequence, The Jesus Incident. Eventually, I will probably break down and order it, but for now, that is against the rules. As a fan of Dune and someone who loves the Iain M. Banks Culture novels and their sentient citizen Ship Minds, I find the following jacket copy describing The Jesus Incident irresistible:
In The Jesus Incident we met Ship, a mechanical intelligence so complete it believed it was God. Ship denied its man-made origin and set off on an intergalactic journey of centuries’ duration, taking along thousands of human beings. After a test of their ability to WorShip* to its satisfaction, Ship abandoned many of its subjects on the hostile planet Pandora.
*sic
