Library Inventory for August 5, 2020

Knickerbocker’s History of New York, by Washington Irving. Paperback from 1965, with commensurate wear and tear. Written at the somewhat leisurely pace of Irving’s time, it’s one of the earliest American classics. Wry, satirical, affectionately mock-heroic, Irving brought many of the powers he lavished on “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” to this work. In their drinking, eating, and smoking habits, and in their phlegmatic difficulty in getting stirred up, his Dutch settlers greatly resemble Tolkien’s later Hobbits. This endears them to me. Ranking: Essential. File Code: Humor. Historical. Paperback.

The Devil and Daniel Webster and Other Stories, by Stephen Vincent Benet. Illustrated by Harold Denison. Had to have this tale in its own book. Read the story in so many places and times, from grade school on. Part of American mythology by now. An influence at least on my own book. Pretty good movie with Walter Huston, too. Ranking: Keeper. Code File: Anthology. Short Stories. Paperback.

The White Deer, by James Thurber. Illustrations by the Author. Another fantasy from the poetic cartoonist, in the same vein, if a little inferior to, “The Thirteen Clocks”. Definitely an influence on Peter S, Beagle’s “The Last Unicorn”. Ranking: Keeper. File Code: Fantasy. Paperback.

archy and mehitabel, by Don Marquis. Illustrations by George Herriman. “Vers Libre” poems and stories by the cockroach incarnation of a failed poet, chronicling the life among the animal denizens that the bug encounters. Read “archy confesses” for the poem that sticks out for me. Yet another secondhand copy, from the great years of Half and Yesterday’s Warehouse. Ranking: Probably Dispensable, but why? File Code: Poetry. Humor. Paperback.

Islandia, by Austin Tappan Wright I bought this book (published 1966) because I had heard good things about it in the fantasy society, and thought I was lucky to find it. From the bits I could manage, it seems more to me like a soap opera with fantasy trappings. I could not get into it. Still, culturally significant? Ranking: Dispensable. File Code: Fantasy? Novel. Paperback.

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Written and Illustrated by Howard Pyle. I bought this when I wanted an edition with Pyle’s artwork, not so much to read. It was paired with a twin edition of “King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table”, which I sold when I got a hardback copy of that book. Ranking: Keeper File Code: Legend. Children’s Book.

Dune; Dune Messiah; and Children of Dune, by Frank Herbert. I first became interested in Dune when our cousin Billy loaned me a whole paper grocery bag of books. I returned them all – except for “Dune” and “The Swords Trilogy” (more on that later). I then bought the hardbacks starting with “God Emperor of Dune” and giving up at “Chapterhouse: Dune”. I’m glad I did, because the franchise continues in a decaying orbit around the original trilogy. I later sold those hardbacks. The series is plagued with unsuccessful attempts to adapt it to the screen; the fascinations of the story (especially the original book) are not fully translatable in a visible medium. Ranking: Keeper. File Code: Science Fiction. Novel. Paperbacks.

National Lampoon’s Doon, by Ellis Weiner. A grand parody of Frank Herbert’s classic “Dune”, replacing the war between great houses and the spice trade with the cut-throat restaurant business and centering on “the dessert planet” where giant wild pretzels roam through a wasteland of sugar. It loves to prick the convolutions of Herbert’s lifestyle: "Think on it! he thought on it," and "There is nothing more useless than a mystical busboy." Ranking: I love it! File Code: Parody. Humor. Novel. Paperback.