this is water, this is water, this is water...

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.

i have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library

This weekend’s Friends of the Library used book sale scores included Obras Completas: 1923-1972 de Jorge Luis Borges published in Buenos Aires in 1974. It has a slightly tattered dust jacket, but the book itself is in beautiful shape, and it is not a library edition.  I decided against buying it during the last few book sales, but I received some friendly advice not to let that happen again. I guess it is time to learn Spanish.

…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.

…and there began a long period of numerical agonizing

…and so many books in the boxes, stacks, and shelves of the thrift stores and library book sales. This week’s thrift store books scores include:

• Catch-22 a novel by Joseph Heller. “There was only one Catch…and that was Catch-22.” A lovely but battered old copy with a perfectly centered “discard” stamped inside the cover.
• Biggest Riddle Book in the World by Joseph Rosenbloom and illustrated by Joyce Behr.  I bought this as a present for Fallie’s birthday later this month, but I am constitutionally unable to withhold presents until the appropriate time. Surprise presents are better anyway. Fallie loves the book.
• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.
• Atonement by Ian McEwan. Atonement and Gilead have been on the shelf for a month; I am not really sure why I didn’t buy them earlier.  The premature best-of lists for the aughts that have sprouted up lately feature both of these prominently.
• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. A pristine paperback with a Peter Sis cover.
• The Lord of the Rings: One Volume Edition by J.R.R.R. Tolkien. An Infinite Jest sized paperback containing the entire trilogy and featuring a Peter Jackson cover. I bought these two Tolkien books because the blond monkeys loved The Edge Chronicles, and sooner or later they will be seeking them out.
• Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. This is a cute little British paperback edition that originally cost 45p. It is my second copy of Franny and Zooey this month, but it was tagged with the color of the day so fate had spoken.
• “As nearly as possible in the spirit of Matthew Salinger, age one, urging a luncheon companion to accept a cool lima bean, I urge my editor, mentor, and (heaven help him) closest friend, William Shawn, genius domus of The New Yorker, lover of the long shot, protector of the unprolific, defender of the hopelessly flamboyant, most unreasonably modest of born great artist-editors, to accept this pretty skimpy-looking book.”
• The Gatefold Book of the World’s Great Warplanes. Featuring kick-ass four page centerfold style pictures of fighter planes.  I will probably give this to one of the boy neighbors eventually, but for now I get to play with it.

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

…so many potentially lethal creatures in the shallows and the depths

…and so many books in the boxes, stacks, and shelves of the thrift stores and library book sales. This week’s thrift store books scores include:

• Wild, Wild World of Animals: Dangerous Sea Creatures. This includes text selections from Jaws by Peter Benchley, Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl, The Living Sea by Jacques-Yves Cousteau, and Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo among others.  It also has some incredible illustrations including a schematic drawing of dangerous creatures arranged by the oceanic zone they inhabit. This is a birthday present for Fallie, so don’t mention it to her.
• The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear edited by Holbrook Jackson (hardcover). “A was an ape, Who stole some white tape, And tied up his toes, In four beautiful bows.”
• The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy (hardcover). I have a troubled relationship with The Border Trilogy, but we won’t discuss that.
• All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
• Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger (hardcover).  I have not read this one in years.
• No Heroics, Please by Raymond Carver. A collection of the previously uncollected.
• The Devil and All His Works by Dennis Wheatley (hardcover). An illustrated survey of the forces of Darkness published in 1971.

don’t be a meanie, buy a weanie or today’s thrift store book score

• Managing Ignatius:The lunacy of Lucky Dogs and life in New Orleans by Jerry E. Strahan (His account of two decades as manager of a street dog empire in the French Quarter.  I don’t know how I missed hearing about this book. I hope it is good.)
• Sailing Alone Around the World by Captain Joshua Slocum (A firsthand account of the first solo sailing voyage around the world in 1895)
• A Song of Stone by Iain Banks

Into the Highways and Hedges : Profiles of the Street Preacher by Tommy Littleton

I found this interesting little volume at the thrift store today.  It appears to have been self published by Tommy Littleton in 2000.  It doesn’t have any printing on the spine or page numbers, but this copy was signed by the author at the bottom of the introductory text. It includes profiles of evangelists and street preachers from Georgia and Alabama including Howard Finster, Thomas Spurgeon Russell, Arthur Blessit, and the author, Tommy Littleton.  I have only skimmed it so far, but it looks like an interesting find.

the before and after

Those trips to the library, the used book store, the record shop, the thrift store, browsing through boxes on some guys porch were entertainment to be sure, but they were also a desperate hunt for stories about the world beyond the small window in front of me.

Before alibris, amazon affiliates, google books, blogs, the ability to search the catalog of almost any library in the world from this shady porch, before all of these wonders, scavenging the physical world for these artifacts was the only way to get them. The copy of that book you found might be the only one you would ever see in your life, your only chance to find out what it said. That shitty third generation cassette tape copy might be the only way you ever heard that song. These things were treasured, and once acquired, they were priceless in the truest sense of the word.

This book, The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson, occupies a special place for me straddling this before and after. While systematically working our way through a dusty used book store on Arcadia Avenue, a good friend and I simultaneously discovered this amusing looking book about the English language. This simultaneous discovery created a dilemma that was ultimately resolved by a friendly co-ownership* of the book.  We had shared custody of this thing we had never seen before and may never see again.

It turned out to be the funniest book of stories about language as language that I have ever read. Subsequent searches of the local libraries revealed no other copies so when we recommended this humorous and out of print volume to others, their only way to exerience it was by reading the copy we loaned them. Ultimately, someone other than me wound up with this book.  I hope they have enjoyed it and passed it on.

Some years later, when the possibility of buying used books online became a reality, I thought of this book.  I found it and wound up buying a copy for less than we had paid for the first one on Arcadia Avenue. I had enjoyed the possibilities of the internet before that purchase, but purchasing that book was the moment when I felt the wealth of this place.

It has been pointed out that Bill Bryson is not a linguist, and I agree that there are many fair criticisms that could be made about the technical details in this book.  However, Bill Bryson is a wonderful storyteller and my experience with this book and its story of the English language led me down paths of exploration that might never have seemed as compelling without it. This book reminds me of early explorations, of time spent with a friend, and of the before and after that defines this era for me.  I own many objects that I would part with before this one.

*At another time, this same friend and I wandered into a house party during one of the epic rambling walks we would take.  It turned out that we knew of some of the people at the party, but really we were strangers enjoying the hospitality and liquor of our generous hosts. We stayed for a while and only decided to leave when a fellow guest handed us a loaded gun and offered to sell it to us for ten dollars. He was agitated, altered, and seemed motivated to get the ten dollars quickly.  While my friend held the gun, we pooled our money and gave the guy his ten dollars**.  Then he gave us a box of extra shells and booked out of there.  I think we had one more drink to calm the nerves and to give the ad hoc gun vendor some distance, and then we borrowed a grocery sack for the gun and walked home.  It was a memorable evening to say the least.  That is how I came to co-own a gun and a book with my friend.

**We weren’t really in the market for a gun, but it is only a matter of time before the fucked up guy that is offering to sell you a loaded gun comes up with a different idea.

this week’s thrift store garage sale friends of the library book scores

• Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
• Ender’s Game - Orson Scott Card (a trade paperback copy not a crappy mass market paperback, I have never seen one of these in the wild before)
• Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson (to replace the copy I loaned to a friend)
• After Dark - Haruki Murakami (Still no copy of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)
• The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick
• A Woman Named Drown - Padgett Powell (we already have this but I have a compulsive need to rescue Padgett Powell books and give them to friends)

And the find of the week, which I received (as a card carrying friend of the library) free of charge as one of my two free books per sale from this month’s friends of the library book sale, the one and only Ragbag endorsed thesaurus:

• The Synonym Finder - Jerome Irving Rodale