Fast Away the Old Year Passes

 

This Wednesday (December 28^th) John and I got together to visit, and we decided (as I has some Christmas gift money burning in my pocket) to check out the few places where books are still available in town. I had no high hopes of any good finds (the pleasure of the brotherly company was the main point of the jaunt) but we came back with some surprisingly good acquisitions.

The first place we went was the Seguin Public Library used bookstore. It is generally a good place to find a decent mix of old and new volumes, and it did not disappoint. I left with a total of five books for $12, all in very good shape.

The Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo (Del Rey/Ballantine Books)

Dreamquests: The Art of Don Maitz (Underwood/Miller)

First off there were a couple of slim Fantasy art books, The Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo and Dreamquests: The Art of Don Maitz. These were not some of my especially favorite artists, but their work was everywhere on book covers and magazines when I was younger and looking at their work definitely conjures up a time. Vallejo’s statuesque blonde and her giant lizards were everywhere, on book and magazine covers, and even as a poster for a completely unrelated movie. Don Maitz’s picture of two vampiric brothers was on an issue of Eerie, which prompted my post yesterday on that subject; his artwork, too, was on covers and in magazines. Yes, they’re rather cheesy, but cheese can be a healthy part of a diet, especially aged cheese such as this.

The Thurber Carnival, by James Thurber ( Harper Perennial)

The Essential Tales of Chekhov, Edited by Richard Ford (Ecco Press/Harper)

Then there were a couple of classic volumes whose nice binding particularly caught my attention. Say what you will about the publishing industry, but a definite advance has been made in the binding of soft covers. The Thurber Carnival makes a good reading version compared to the old hardback I have (also purchased at the library bookstore). And because I have been branching out into Russian Literature in my old age, The Essential Tales of Chekhov looks like to be a handy sampler of his short stories.

The Book of the Dun Cow, by Walter Wangerin, Jr. (Harper & Row)

But the most unexpected prize found here was a hardback copy of The Book of the Dun Cow. This looks to be an original copy of the 1978 printing! The paper dust jacket is in surprisingly good shape for being over 40 years old. I’ve had a paperback copy since 1979; this is a definite upgrade.

The next place we visited was The Cranny, a small thrift store tucked away in the desolate wasteland of the old Seguin Crossroads Mall on the edge of town. The thick, swirling mass of leaves and litter that greeted us there did not bode well. We left that place empty-handed; there were a few things that lured (like a clumsily packaged audio version of The Hobbit on CD) but ultimately seemed not worth the risk.

Our visit to the Seguin Goodwill was a little more propitious. I found a hardback copy of Tolkien’s Roverandom with a somewhat damaged jacket that I insisted on buying for John, since he didn’t have a copy. I think it might very well be the first American edition. Anyway, I couldn’t leave that unlikely orphan behind. There were a couple of juvenile tie-ins to the Peter Jackson Tolkien films, but I was able to resist. But what I found next completely astounded me.

I have written lately about the first paperback copy of T. H. White’s The Once and Future King that I had back in middle school, the old tie-in to the musical Camelot. Here (as if summoned by the memory) was a copy of the identical book! It was in fairly good shape, too, for a 54-year-old paperback. I had forgotten the black spine and the photo on the back cover, and it looked a tad thinner than I recalled, but it was it. Well, for only $2 I had to have it. It seemed like fate.

And those, barring any unforeseen circumstances, are my last books of 2022. It has been an interesting time. It is odd; I have almost totally cleared my Wish List on Amazon, and I go into the New Year with few impending purchases on the horizon, and none that are urgent, always excepting the impending The Homecoming of Beorthnoth at the end of March.  But that’s in the almost unimaginable future; that’s next year.