Discovery on the Shelves

I'm working on having a sort of modern geek garage sale. This of course means that it has to be online, especially with the difficulty of finding buyers for things like signed first edition science fiction. It feels like I've been going back and forth on whether to use eBay or Amazon forever and I think it's basically coming down to things that I can reasonably value and the things that are so unique that it's really hard to do. The latter are probably better candidates for eBay, IMO. For example I found a book on the shelves yesterday that I thought I'd lost years ago since I just couldn't remember where it had gotten to (Hey, there are lots of books in this house.) and I had lost some books years before due to water damage. It's a 1973 paperback edition of Robert Heinlein's The Puppet Masters. What made this such an interesting find for me back in 1977 at a little used bookstore was the inscription. Yes, it's very good condition for a 40 year old paperback and not only did Heinlein sign it but it's inscribed "To our jolly shipmate, Louise Thayer. Robert & Ginny". It's also noted that it was while he was on the Mariposa on Washington's Birthday in 1974. I may have to sell it but I was still very happy to find that it hadn't been destroyed after all. But lots of luck finding information to help price that one. Then there's the scripts. George R.R. Martin has done things in television before Game of Thrones: The Complete First Season". In fact he produced a pilot for a television show that never got picked up by the networks, Doorways. ABC actually commissioned six scripts for episodes that never were produced. It so happens that I acquired a copy of the script for the pilot and the first episode years ago at a convention's charity auction. George signed both of them Once again, how do you value something like that. I'm still mulling over what kind of reserve to put on them since I do think that eBay is probably the best venue to sell them. But I'm still smiling about finding that book.

Places in the Heart of a Bibliophile

I used to shop at Border's, don't have anything against Barnes and Noble, order books online and even read eBooks. But there is still something special about a good bookstore. This is a nice little article on CNN by an author and travel writer about her favorite bookstores. They certainly sound like places I'd like to visit and I love the photos of Parnassus Books in Nashville and Ben McNally Books in Toronto.

The Problem of Too Many Books

OK, so there is a bit of a problem with having thousands of books in the house. I mentioned in an earlier post that I was re-reading the Dresden Files books. Well, I hit a bit of a roadblock. I can't find my copy of Turncoat, the eleventh book in the series. I'm still looking but this is really, really annoying. Then there's the other minor inconvenience of occasionally buying a duplicate of a book you just haven't seen on the shelves for a few years.

My name is Jim...

...and I am a book-a-holic. I haven't posted that much lately because I've been on a binge of reading. First I went through the Dubric Byerly series by Tamara Siler Jones. I'd read the first two soon after they came out and just bought the third one recently and I decided to re-read the first two before reading the third. On her own blog Ms. Jones writes a post about Dubric as a character. I know I remember seeing a post somewhere where she said that her publisher didn't want any more Dubric Byerly books which I consider to a major fail. She accomplished something difficult for a writer to do with me, which is make me care about a character who often is a complete ass. She also created a world and set of characters that definitely kept me involved and I'd like to see more of it and will probably pick up Fire - A Lars Hargrove Story this weekend. Then in the same spirit I started re-reading The Dresden Files series again to lead up to reading the latest book in that series that hit paperback, which I just picked up.