The Past Revisited: Histories, Old Books, and Sequels

 

The Wizard of Oz: The Official 50^th Anniversary Pictorial History, by John Fricke, Jay Scarfone, and William Stillman. Introduction by Jack Haley, Jr.

“A commemorative volume offers the definitive pictorial history of one of the most popular movies of all time.” - Amazon. A big book, full of photos, art, toys, masks, commemorative items, in fact anything connected to the 1939 MGM movie. The history of the book, the making of the movie, its afterlife at matinees and on TV, and its cultural impact.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Pictorial History. Film. Hardback.

Advanced D&D Monster Manuel (4^th Edition), by Gary Gygax.

“An Illustrated Compendium of Monsters: Aerial Servant to Zombie.” Originally John’s and possibly still rightly so. I have it for the bestiary of it all. Despite the best efforts of friends and family to get me (a fantasy nut) to play D&D, I’ve never really gotten into it.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Bestiary. Gaming. Hardback.

Ghost Story, by Peter Straub.

The scariest novel I have ever read. I remember the first time I read it I was sleeping in the Green Room at Nanny’s, with its floating curtains and wall-size windows into the atrium and the night. I tried following Straub for a few years, but he never equaled this homage to the horror of Henry James and “The Turn of the Screw” and the New England tradition. “Ghost Story is a horror novel by American writer Peter Straub. It was published on January 1, 1979 by Coward, McCann and Geoghegan. The book was adapted into a film by the same name in 1981, minus the novel's fifth protagonist character, Lewis Benedikt. The novel was a watershed in Straub's career. Though his earlier books had achieved a limited amount of critical and commercial success, Ghost Story became a national bestseller and cemented the author's reputation.” – Wikipedia.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Horror. Novel. Hardback.

The Dracula Book of Great Vampire Stories, Edited with an Introduction by Leslie Shepard.

An anthology of many great early vampire tales, by Stoker, Le Fanu, Maupassant, Crawford, Benson, Blackwood, and others. We used to have a paperback of this that John and I contended over with for a while, but when I got this Hardback I conceded the other.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Anthology. Vampires. Hardback.

Escape from Hell, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

A sequel to Niven’s “Inferno”. “The novel continues the story of deceased science fiction writer Allen Carpenter in his quest to help other damned souls in Hell. Like the first book, “Escape from Hell” extensively references Dante's Inferno. Jerry Pournelle, one of the book's co-authors, described the book as "Dante meets Vatican II." Following events in the first novel, in which Carpenter learned that it is possible to leave Hell, Carpenter wants to help others in the way his benefactor helped him. Carpenter meets and travels through all the circles of the Hell described by Dante. He is accompanied in his travels by Sylvia Plath (whom he rescues from the Wood of the Suicides by burning her tree, causing her physical body to reform itself), attempting to understand the purpose of Hell and free many of the damned. Carpenter discovers that, apparently because he returned to Hell of his own free will to help others, he now possesses powers and abilities such as his mentor, Benito, also displayed. In the end, and partly as the consequence of some unusual changes to Hell itself, Carpenter not so much escapes as that he is shown the door for being a troublemaker.” – Wikipedia.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Bangsian Fantasy. Novel. Hardback.

The Book of Sorrows, by Walter Wangerin, Jr.

Sequel to “The Book of the Dun Cow”. I wanted to like it, but I just couldn’t get into it. Maybe it was the weary setting back to square one, after the apocalyptic ending of the first book. I don’t know. Maybe the time wasn’t right: too late, or too soon. Maybe someday I’ll find my way in. There is another in the series, “The Third Book of the Dun Cow: Peace at Last” which I’ve never seen.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Beast Fable. Fantasy. Novel. Softcover.

Urshurak, by The Brothers Hildebrandt and Jerry Nichols.

When this came out in 1979, I wanted to like it. I liked fantasy. I liked the Hildebrandts. The pictures are great. The concept is alright, but the execution … their story-telling talent is as illustrators, and Nichols is not a good writer. I can’t look at this book without thinking of carrying it in Mrs. Hardcastle’s class and trying to show it off, while admitting that the writing was sub-par.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Softcover.

84, Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff.

“A  1970 book by Helene Hanff, later made into a stage play, television play, and film, about the twenty-year correspondence between the author and Frank Doel, chief buyer of Marks & Co antiquarian booksellers, located at the eponymous address in London, England. Hanff was in search of obscure classics and British literature titles that she had been unable to find in New York City when she noticed an ad in the Saturday Review of Literature. She first contacted the shop in 1949 and it fell to Doel to fulfil her requests. In time, a long-distance friendship developed between the two and between Hanff and other staff members, as well, with an exchange of Christmas packages, birthday gifts and food parcels to help with the post-World War II food shortages in Britain. Their letters included discussions about topics as diverse as the sermons of John Donne, how to make Yorkshire Pudding, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the coronation of Elizabeth II. Hanff postponed visiting her English friends until too late; Doel died in December 1968 from peritonitis from a burst appendix, and the bookshop eventually closed in December 1970. Hanff did finally visit Charing Cross Road and the empty shop in the summer of 1971.” Loved the movie, so got the book, and it is good as well. A Penguin.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Epistolary Novel. Softcover.

The Dwarf, by Par Lagerkvist.

Bought this book years ago at Yesterday’s Warehouse. “The dwarf is the narrator, obviously obsessed with writing down his experiences in a form of diary. Everything in the novel is described from his viewpoint, mostly in retrospect, ranging from a few hours or minutes to several weeks or months after the actual events. The dwarf is a profound misanthrope and generally embodies all things evil. He hates almost every person at the court except for the prince (who is the ruler of the city-state, rather king than prince), or rather aspects of him. He loves war, brutality and fixed positions. While almost all other characters of the novel develop during the chain of events, the dwarf does not change. He is still exactly the same character from the first to the last page. He is deeply religious, but his take on Christianity includes the belief in a non-forgiving God. He is impressed with Bernardo's science but soon repelled by its relentless search for truth. When the dwarf is ordered to assassinate a number of enemies of the prince using poisoned wine, he takes this opportunity to assassinate one of the prince's rivals, simply because the dwarf dislikes the rival and the rival is having an affair with the prince's wife. The novel ends with the dwarf being strapped in chains at the bottom of the royal castle, never to be released again. He is seemingly convicted for flogging the prince's wife to death in anger over her sins. However he takes this sentence lightly, since, as he says, "soon the prince will need his dwarf again." – Wikipedia.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Novel. Softcover.

Kingdoms of Elfin, by Sylvia Townsend Warner.

This book came out when I was in high school. It has one of those papery covers that is prone to disintegration, and there are specks on this forty-year-old volume that suggests the bugs might have been nibbling on it. “Elfindom is an aristocratic society, jealous of its privileges. The ruling classes engage in such pursuits as patronizing the arts or hunting with the Royal Pack of Werewolves, while the lower orders take pleasure in conducting brutal raiding parties into the world to torment mortals. The Kingdoms of Elfin are more diverse and widely scattered than is often thought; from the Welsh Elfins who, though constitutionally incapable of faith, remove mountains, and the elegant and witty French Court of Brocéliande where castration almost becomes a vogue, to the Kingdom of Zuy in the Low Countries, trafficking suppositories and religious pictures. Sylvia Townsend Warner's richly exuberant imagination combined with the calm precision of her language conjures up a sublunary realm that is entirely convincing.” – Goodreads. Her last book; she died the next year.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Short Stories. Fantasy. Softcover.

Tales from Watership Down, by Richard Adams.

Short stories that return to the world of Watership Down. Many old characters are revisited in new tales. I don’t know if it’s just my weary old brain, but I can’t get into a lot of these long-delayed returns; just can’t raise the enthusiasm. Yet, they are related to the old classics.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Short Stories. Beast Fable. Hardback.

Animal Farm, by George Orwell.

“Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. The book tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, however, the rebellion is betrayed, and the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon. According to Orwell, the fable reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union.” – Wikipedia. There has been an animated movie, and a live action TV version, and I was even in a stage version in high school. [Not my cover, but of the vintage of this copy, which has a plain green cover with reddish letters.]

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Allegory/Satire. Novel. Hardback.

1975 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, by The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania.

They can try to re-write their history as much as they like, but I got the evidence! The year of (one of) their grand failures of the prophesied end. Actually has Mike’s and my “Speech Counsel” forms from the Theocratic Ministry School.

Ranking: Grim Reminder.

File Code: The Bulliest of Bull Bleep.

Notre Dame de Paris, by Victor Marie Hugo.

Number 12 in The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. The longer version. I bought this at one of the last book sales of the old Seguin Public Library. It reminds me of the shorter, older, much battered version we’ve had for years, from which I read a passage in David Fleming’s class for a recitation (trying to be a smarty). We read that old book until the cloth cover was loose. I always identified both with Quasimodo and the alchemical, love-torn Claude Frollo.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Historical Novel. Hardback.

The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce.

Bought at Yesterday’s Warehouse. “The Devil's Dictionary is a satirical dictionary written by American Civil War soldier, journalist, and writer Ambrose Bierce consisting of common words followed by humorous and satirical definitions. The lexicon was written over three decades as a series of installments for magazines and newspapers. Bierce's witty definitions were imitated and plagiarized for years before he gathered them into books, first as The Cynic's Word Book in 1906 and then in a more complete version as The Devil's Dictionary in 1911.” – Wikipedia. Cover shows slight damage.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Humor. Satire. Hardback.

Fifty-One Tales by Lord Dunsany.

“Fifty-One Tales is a collection of fantasy short stories by Irish writer Lord Dunsany, considered a major influence on the work of J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Ursula K. Le Guin and others.” -Wikipedia. It was published in 1915; my copy is from 1917.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Fantasy. Short Stories. Hardback.

Poems Bewitched and Haunted, Selected and Edited by John Hollander.

Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets. Poems of witches, ghosts, haunted houses, and magic, perfect for Halloween and appropriately decorated with jack o’ lanterns on the cover. A nice little browser.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Poetry. Anthology. Supernatural. Hardback.

A Severe Mercy, and Under the Mercy, by Sheldon Vanauken.

The first volume tells about Vanauken’s marriage with his wife Davy, how they set up their deep romantic love as a ‘shining barrier’ against the world. Then they found their developing Christian faith an invasion into what was becoming a selfish, enclosed world of their own, beautiful as it was. They had begun a correspondence with C. S. Lewis as they became Christians; the book contains ‘18 previously unpublished letters’ from him. The ‘severe mercy’ is the illness and death of Davy, removed before their love can become an idol between them and God. Their love then remains constant and true within the love of God, until they be reunited again. The second volume is about Vanauken working out his faith in a post-Davy, post-Lewis world, and “how he lost sight of his faith, became involved in the peace and civil rights movements, and gradually rediscovered his Christian beliefs” (- Amazon), eventually becoming a Catholic. The book also discusses his opinions on several social matters, including feminism as it was developing from a social justice into an angry and illogical political tool.

Ranking: Keepers.

File Code: Religion. Autobiography. Hardbacks.

T. H. White

The Sword in the Stone, by T. H. White. Endpapers by Robert Lawson, Decorations by T. H. White.

The only date inside is “1939” and I must take it as accurate; probably a book club edition, as it was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection at the time. I read the book itself in middle school; I remember reading it at lunchtime in the Drama room. Of course, I had seen the Disney movie and been enchanted, but this was a whole other experience. Full of whimsy and adventure, and White’s incomparable version of Merlyn. “The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.” This is the version of the book before it was rewritten for “The Once and Future King.”

Ranking: Oh, So Essential.

File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Hardback.

The Sword in the Stone, by T. H. White. Cover by Alan Lee.

I only found out fairly recently that the original Collier edition of this book was different from the version edited for American consumption, rather like Rowling’s Harry Potter books at a later date. This is a reprint of that version, and very surprising and interesting I found it too. Not too different, but interesting differences.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Softcover.

The Once and Future King, by T. H. White.

For a long while I only had paperback copies of this book, first one with the horrible romance-novel cover of the poster of Camelot, then the more acceptable version with a Frederic Marvin cover. I was glad to finally get this edition at a San Marcos book sale recently. It is an 18^th printing, and I can’t help but feel it is much older than the “1980” gift inscription inside, but after 1963, because it mentions White’s death. The impact of this book both on fantasy literature and popular culture in general is even now hard to calculate. Growing ever more serious from the buffoonery of ‘The Sword in the Stone’ (here rewritten to include ants and geese, replacing Madame Mim and Galapas the Giant) to the stark tragedy of ‘The Candle in the Wind’, this was White’s magnum opus. There is some age and repair on this copy.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Novel. Historical Fantasy. Hardback.

The Book of Merlyn, by T. H. White. Illustrations by Trevor Stubley. Prologue by Sylvia Townsend Warner.

The release of this book was a big deal when I was just starting high school. The ‘lost chapter’ had long been a matter of lore among White enthusiasts. It coincided very well with the new surge of Fantasy that was taking place just then. It was supposed to be the concluding book in a teratology – a five book series – but when his editors wouldn’t accept it (partly because of post-war paper shortages) he jammed some parts into the rewrites of ‘The Once and Future King’ rather than lose them. He says he suddenly saw that the theme of his Arthurian books was finding an antidote to war, and that animals do not have war, so bringing Arthur and Merlyn and the animals from the first book back to examine the question would bring the story full circle, ‘perfect and rounded and whole’. The book suffers a bit from lacking an author’s final polish. It is Warner, I think, who suggested reading the original ‘Sword’ first, then the next three books of ‘King’, and then ‘Book’ to get an idea of what White originally wanted. [Lacks this jacket.]

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Fantasy. Philosophy. Novel. Hardback.

The Maharajah and Other Stories, by T. H. White.

A collection of his short fictions, including ‘The Troll’, which Mrs. Rector read to us in middle school. What was that class called? [John says it was simply ‘Ghost Stories’] White’s imagination is rather dark, and most of these tales are grim and a bit tragic, when they are not ironically amused. I bought this copy in the sale bin at Hastings, long ago.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Short Stories. Anthology. Hardback.

Letters to a Friend, by T. H. White. Selected and Edited by Francois Gallix.

“Presents a selection of the correspondence between White and L. J. Potts, the author's mentor, advisor, critic, and devoted friend from White's second year at Cambridge to the end of Potts's life.” – Google Books. Represents just a remnant of survivors, as most of the correspondence between White and Potts was lost thanks to storage in a leaky garden shed. White based much of the character of Merlyn in his Arthurian books on his old teacher and confidant.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Letters. Literature/Biography. Hardback.

England Have My Bones, by T. H. White.

A diary in the form of novel about White’s efforts learning to hunt, to fish, to fly an airplane, and to drive a car (it ends with an unfortunate car accident) all told with an eye to the details of his personal experiences and the nature around him. Illustrated by the author.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Autobiography. Hardback.

The Goshawk, by T. H. White. Illustrated by the Author.

T. H. White himself was aware that he was a man of many manias and enthusiasm, entering into each, one gaining a working knowledge (if seldom an expert knowledge) of each, then picking up the next like a new toy. Among his more permanent hobbies was as an austringer, or trainer of hawking birds. This book records his first efforts as such, with a goshawk he named Gos, and which he tried to train according to a medieval manual and method. This was much more complicated than it needed to be (according to modern falconers) but gave him great insight for use in his Arthurian stories.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Natural History. Novel. Softcover.

The Book of Beasts, by T. H. White. Illustrated by pictures from Medieval manuscripts.

“Of The Book of Beasts, White writes: "No Latin prose bestiary has ever before been printed, even in Latin. This is the first and only English translation in print." The bestiary was a bestseller in the Middle Ages, a kind of natural history cum-zoological survey that presumed to describe the animals of the world and to point out the human traits they exemplified. Combining the surprisingly accurate with the endearingly phantasmagorical, the bestiarists came up with a bewildering array of real and exotic creatures. The behavior or attributes of the animals often functioned as a metaphor for teaching religious, moral, and political precepts. In addition to a multitude of real mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish, described here with varying degrees of zoological accuracy, the bestiarist introduces a swarm of fanciful denizens thought to haunt the Dark Ages: manticore, a creature with a man's face, a lion's body, and a ravenous appetite for human flesh; dragon or draco, the biggest serpent and the embodiment of the Devil; amphivia, a fish that could walk on land and swim in the sea; jaculus, a flying serpent; the familiar phoenix; the griffin; and other exotic fauna. Much of the charm of this edition lies in the copious footnotes compiled by T. H. White. With immense erudition, wit, grace, and a singular lack of condescension, the author illuminates literary, scientific, historical, linguistic, and other aspects of the bestiarist's catalog. He further enhances the volume with informative discussions of the history of the bestiary from its origins in remote oral traditions; through Herodotus, Pliny and Aristotle; during the medieval period and the Renaissance; and up to Sir Thomas Browne's Vulgar Errors (1646). Both amusing and amazing, The Book of Beasts is not only a rich survey of the proto-zoology on which much of our later science is based, but also a revealing, illustrated examination of how pre-scientific man perceived the earth's creatures.” – Amazon. Right up my alley. Found this copy at Yesterday’s Warehouse; it had a rather frail dustjacket that I removed and preserve in the files.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Bestiary. Medieval. Hardback.

The Age of Scandal: An Excursion Through a Minor Period, by T. H. White.

“This amusing foray into eighteenth century literature is an entertaining tabloid biography of an age not unlike our own; men and women of fashion led their lives under the avid scrutiny of a public with a sharp appetite for scandal and sensation. In the period between the so-called Age of Reason and the Romantic Revival - that which the author calls the Age of Scandal - aristocratic and privileged eccentrics flourished. Here we meet notorious persons such as the libertine Marquis de Sade, and the Countess of Kingston who journeyed to Rome in the hope of seducing the Pope.” - Amazon. Has a companion piece I would like to get, “The Scandalmonger”. [Lacks this jacket.]

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: History. Gossip. Hardback.

Farewell Victoria, by T. H. White.

One of his early potboiler novels, and a look at life during the Victorian era as seen through the eyes of one man. Can’t say as I’ve read it. Pictures from “The Illustrated London News” and “Punch”.

Ranking: Keeper?

File Code: Novel. Historical. Softcover.

The Master, by T. H. White.

A second-hand ex-library book. “It involves two children, Judy and Nicky, and their dog Jokey, who are stranded on Rockall, an extremely small, uninhabited, remote rocky islet in the North Atlantic Ocean. They find that it is hollow and inhabited by a mysterious person who aims to take over the world … The Master: 157 years old, he communicates by telepathy, which he can also use to control people's minds. He has invented a kind of vibrator-ray to take over the world … In trying to impress upon the children the meaning of the Master's great age, Mr. Frinton says: "Dr. Moreau was experimenting on his island and the Iron Pirate was at sea and She was living her immortal life in Africa when the Master was about ninety. Stevenson wrote Treasure Island when he was eighty-four. Captain Nemo was sailing in the Nautilus when he was seventy. Henry Russell Wallace [sic] thought of the origin of species when he was around sixty. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when he was coming of age, and at the battle of Waterloo he was four years older than you are.” The children of course manage to stymie the Master’s plans almost by sheer luck. The book is … rather uneven but has its good parts.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Science Fiction. Novel. Hardback.

The Godstone and the Blackymor, by T. H. White. Illustrations by Edward Ardizzone.

“God knows what this book is about. I suppose it’s a bit of autobiography really. But it’s about living on the West Coast of Ireland, in ‘the parish nearest to America’ – they all are, I mean the parishes – and it is about the people and things there, more than about me. I stumbled across what Protestants had said was an idol still being worshipped by the Catholics, and a coal-black Negro selling patent medicines, and a real Fairy Fire which lit our footsteps over the infinite bog – no whimsy. I did a lot of goose-shooting and falconry and salmon fishing. I went on pilgrimages and drank a lot and made friends and found out what I could and thought about it. I got ashamed of killing things. It seems to me a complicated sort of book about a complicated place, which I loved, and anyway it has pictures by Ardizzone, who loved it too.” – T. H. White. [Lacks this jacket.]

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Biography. Travel. Hardback.

T. H. White: A Biography, by Sylvia Townsend Warner.

I first read this book in high school and was rather shocked with what I found out about White, which did not jibe with the image his books gave of him at all. It went far to stretching the boundaries of my understanding and my sympathies. A man tormented and struggling with his sadomasochism and his homosexuality, always seeking out relationships where he would be the dominant partner (an uneducated barmaid when he was determined to try to be straight; in his imagination with the schoolboy ‘Zed’ whom he befriended; with a poor Italian gigolo when he passed through Europe). All the same he has his own personal sense of honor and a tenderness that is frequently winning; it is no wonder he had so many good friends. A life of writing pursued by hook or by crook, through financial ups and downs and always just a few steps from a depression fought with heroic persistence, this insightful biography by Warner still stands as THE life of White. Photos and drawings by White.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Biography. Literature. Hardback.

On the Shelf

The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame (Hardback); The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum (Hardback); The Book of Dragons, selected by Michael Hague (Hardback); The Reluctant Dragon, by Kenneth Grahame (Softcover); all Illustrated by Michael Hague.

I first started getting Hague editions in the early 80’s, with ‘Willows’; I remember at the toy store ‘Yellow Brick Road’ they had little stuffed toys of Toad and the others with Hague’s art printed on cloth as a tie-in. I like his work; it is reminiscent of a classical style, like Rackham’s. And dragons and Oz? Of course I must have them. He did an edition of “The Hobbit” too, which I’ll get to in time.

Ranking: Keepers.

File Code: Illustrated Editions. Classics.

The Adventure Time Encyclopaedia: Inhabitants, Lore, Spells, and Ancient Cryptic Warnings of the Land of Ooo circa 19.56 B. G. E. – 501 A. G. E., Compiled by His Lowness Hunson Abadeer, Lord of Evil. Translated from the Scrolls of Ooo by Martin Olson.

Another ‘fake book’, covering the period when Adventure Time was a great series, before it became too preachy and stumbled down into darkness. Man, what a ride. A guide to characters, events, and lore, with copious illustration on every page. Even its calligraphy is ever-changingly amusing.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Guidebook. Cartoon. Hardback.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, by Douglas Adams.

“Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is a humorous detective novel by English writer Douglas Adams, first published in 1987. It is described by the author on its cover as a "thumping good detective-ghost-horror-who dunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic". The book was followed by a sequel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. The only recurring major characters are the eponymous Dirk Gently, his secretary Janice Pearce and Sergeant Gilks. Adams also began work on another novel, The Salmon of Doubt, with the intention of publishing it as the third book in the series, but died before completing it.” – Wikipedia. I kept these novels after abandoning the Hitchhiker’s series; they are an ace better, or at least less annoying. Has been made into a questionable BBC television show.

Ranking: Keepers.

File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Hardbacks.

The Deeper Meaning of Liff, by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd.

Perhaps the best and funniest of all Adams’ books, it is “a dictionary of things that there aren't any words for yet". Rather than inventing new words, Adams and Lloyd picked a number of existing place-names and assigned interesting meanings to them, meanings that can be regarded as on the verge of social existence and ready to become recognisable entities. All the words listed are toponyms and describe common feelings and objects for which there is no current English word. Examples are Shoeburyness ("The vague uncomfortable feeling you get when sitting on a seat that is still warm from somebody else's bottom") and Plymouth ("To relate an amusing story to someone without remembering that it was they who told it to you in the first place"). The book cover usually bears the tagline "This book will change your life", either as part of its cover or as an adhesive label. Liff (a village near Dundee in Scotland) is then defined in the book as "A book, the contents of which are totally belied by its cover. For instance, any book the dust jacket of which bears the words, 'This book will change your life'." – Wikipedia. An expanded edition of “The Meaning of Liff.”

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Humor. Parodic Dictionary. Hardback.

Letters, by Sylvia Townsend Warner. Edited by William Maxwell.

The two works of Warner that I have (Kingdoms of Elfin and a biography of T. H. White) are so good that when I saw this at a San Marcos Library sale, I had to have it. There is something very personal about reading an author’s letters, especially from such as a good writer as Warner, as she writes about her life as it was lived. Of special intensity for me was her letter on page 226, when she talks about visiting White’s house on Aldernay, just four months after his death, and seeing all his personal items still sitting around, ‘defenceless as a corpse’. She said she could feel his presence ‘morose, suspicious, intensely watchful, and determined to despair,’ as imminent a haunt as she had ever experienced in her life. Most of the letters of course, are about her life, her writing, and her love Valentine, all told in the most perceptive and lucid prose that is almost poetry, supple without being high-flown.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Letters. Biography. Hardback.

A Treasury of the Familiar Volume I, Edited by Ralph L. Woods.

I found this book at a local library sale, and was surprised to find it had belonged to Malcolm Bonorden, the rather scary 6^th grade teacher at McQueeney, the only male teacher at school. I was looking through this copy (once Malcolm Bonorden's, bought at a library sale). The man was 57, dude; in a month I'll be as old as Malcolm Bonorden ever was. The man always seemed writhen to me, but then I was only 8 or 9. I kind of foolishly dreaded being in his class, not being a manly little boy, then Briesemeister opened up and saved me from ever having to face that. Looking at his book (with pages turned down at "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "Little Orphant Annie" and especially "The Fool's Prayer" - which I always liked since I was a freshman in high school - gave me a strange new insight into his character. The book itself is an amazing treasury of what was popular in 1942, recitation pieces and famous addresses and poetry and documents like the Declaration of Independence … if you want to put your head into a certain historical American state of mind, browse this book.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Treasury. Hardback.