I don’t have any end-of-year lists for you, but I also don’t want to waste GREAT ORIGINAL CONTENT in the late-December dead zone, so I’m splitting the difference and turning this into an open thread to talk about hard-to-find and out-of-print books you’ve been trying to get your hands on but can’t. Maybe we can all help each other.
I need this semi-desperately. Please help.
There are 38 copies of The Dune Encyclopedia on Amazon starting at $37.88, GRAB ‘EM QUICK EVERYBODY: http://www.amazon.com/Dune-Encyclopedia-Authorize…
I recently learned that the Lord Peter Wimsey Companion exists, and it pains me that I do not own it.
I also collect rare/out-of-print Scarlet Pimpernel sequels, but I think I actually have most of the ones written by Orczy!
Are we related? I collect Scarlet Pimpernel books too.
This isn’t quite relevant but: last week I got to hold Sayers’ hand written letters to her ex-lover and the librarian told me I could take photos. So now I have pictures of her incredibly witty, snide letters, and I can go and actually hold them at any point.
Also, there’s a LPW cookbook somewhere that a friend’s mother had and that I want.
SEND THEM TO ME WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR
Email?
[email protected]
bless!
I am deeply envious!
I really want to visit your library and read your Scarlet Pimpernel collection. It is so hard finding those books in libraries.
should you ever find yourself in the DC area, you’re most welcome to come check them out!
I have that book! I was a member of the Lord Peter Wimsey Society in college, which was extra fun because I got the newsletter in the mail all the way from England. I bought the 2nd edition when it was available through the Society. It has a shiny red dust jacket, and sometimes I would just stroke it (which had the added benefit of freaking out my friends and roommates!).
Just closing my eyes for a moment and savoring the time I was in Portland and Powell’s had every out-of-print book I was looking for. Bless you, Powell’s.
You can buy it used or buy a print-on-demand copy from AbeBooks: http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts…
Oh I would LOVE to find a copy of Need A House? Call Ms Mouse. No one seems to be selling them for less than $100 — which, considering the fact that I have no kids and am not loaded, is kind of a lot of money.
Wow, I loved that book! I think someone gave it to my brother when we were kids, but I took it over eventually. Come to think of it, the book may still be in my parents’ house somewhere… I’d offer it to you, but don’t think I could part with it once I got it back!
It makes me furious that the majority of Dorothy Hughes books are currently out of print, but they are generally pretty easy to find.
The one that eludes me is a book I read years ago that was an abridged Bible edited by a Catholic priest, a Protestant minister, a rabbi, and a secular Biblical scholar. Each verse had extensive footnotes by the aforementioned folks, and it was amazing. It was called something bland like “The Bible Reader,” and my copy literally fell apart and I haven’t been able to find it again.
this is not at all the same thing — but you might also be interested in the Jefferson Bible: http://www.beacon.org/The-Jefferson-Bible-P451.as…
Is this it? http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0225275937…
OMG, that’s it, and somehow I didn’t get a notification that anyone had replied! Thank you!
My mom has a really cool set of the Lord of the Rings trilogy where when you put the covers together, they make a painting of Middle Earth, but of course now the only ones you can find that aren’t super-expensive collector’s editions have Frodo’s stupid whiny face all over them.
I have my uncle’s copies, which he bought used. They were the first edition printed in the US and are long since out of print. Apparently there was a big problem with unauthorized copies being circulated, because Ballantine’s edition came with this statement from Tolkien printed on the title page: http://cl.ly/Z8Mp
Do you know what edition that is? I’d love to look up a picture on the internets and see for myself because that sounds awesome.
I found it! (Well, not for sale, but a picture of it):
Printed in the early 70s.
(the art is by Barbara Remington, according to the internet)
The first edition was printed in the US in 1965, and they did new runs pretty much yearly after that until well into the 70s.
Oh yeah, this is the edition I read as a kid! Mine were really ratty though, so no regrets about potential resale cash lost.
These were the ones I had growing up, except someone had lost the third one so I always had to take it out of the library.
…….Holy crap, that’s the edition I used to have, or at least a paperback version (are those paperbacks in the photos?). I didn’t realize they were rare and I let them completely fall apart. I mean, this was 2000, they were sort of falling apart to begin with, but I feel like an asshole right now.
I’m not sure they’re actually that valuable, since they printed so many of them? I’d probably be able to find them if I spent more than a couple minutes looking…
I have those, and they’re falling all to pieces.
A good image of those covers could surely be printed at the right scale to be a jacket for a boring movie-tie-in printing!
Sounds like it’s the same edition (Ballantine, 1965) I was talking about in my (pending) comment. My copy of “The Fellowship of the Ring” is missing, but here is a pic of “The Two Towers” and “The Return of the King” side-by-side: http://cl.ly/Z7zh
I want any edition that has decent fold out maps at the back. You can’t get anywhere if you have to squint at back pages to follow along.
Side note: I just got the first American edition of the Silmarilljon for Christmas and it is beautiful. And a lovely large map in the back.
Suzuki Beane. Goes for big $ on eBay.
There is a shop in my town with this name – thank you for demystifying it for me!
I’ve got a paperback, but my late aunt had it in HARDCOVER and I suspect her estate was basically tossed in the recycling bin. Still sad about that. Go, Suzuki, Go!
I used to have something called the “Book of Synonyms,” which was so much better than any thesaurus I ever had. I left it at an old job, to which I never wanted to go back. I would love to find another copy.
Can I tell a story about an out of print book I recently found?
When I was in high school my bestie and I were very into “Michelle Remembers” which is the ‘true’ story of satanic ritual abuse, and was one of the catalysts of the satanic panic. It also takes place in the sleepy town we grew up in. Our copies were eventually lost and we sort of fell away from it in the intervening 10 years. It would come up in conversation sometimes with people from home, and when I moved back I started keeping an eye on used bookshops and never saw another copy. This summer I was parking my bike at work, and what should be lying beside the dumpster? A bright red hardback copy of “Michelle Remembers”! I took it into my office and wiped it with Lysol and told anyone who woudl listen how excited I was to have found the book I was looking for for free in the trash. My boss walks in, sees the red book and LOSES IT. Apparently the night before she had had a dream about a bright red book called “Michelle Remembers” and was soooo freaked out. It’s a legend around the office now that she is slightly psychic. The book did not stand the test of time – it’s basically unreadable because it’s so bad, but everyone here has given it chance and I keep it proudly displayed with my boring work reference books.
a really great podcast about bad books (“I Don’t Even Own a Television”) does an equally really great episode about that book.
I am listening to that after lunch! Thanks!
I remember she was forced to drink her own pee! In a stairway?
Oh hmm – I just read it and I can’t remember. The part that stands out to me is when they out her in the statue. That podcast mentioned above is worth a listen!
This is so timely! Yesterday, I got my special-ordered-from-England copy of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner That Held Them. I’m fifty pages in and loving it so far, but as it’s a lesbian communist’s imagining of one hundred years in the life of a medieval convent, that’s really no surprise!
I had been looking for Suzan Lori-Parks’s “Fucking A” for YEARS (since 2010) and had zero luck in bookstores and couldn’t even get one on Amazon, until recently–it is now in stock and paired with another work of hers (“In the Blood”) and I got it in the mail yesterday and I can’t wait to sit down and finally read it.
Probably lots of books I could add to this list but the one that springs to mind first is Women and Men by Joseph McElroy. Only seen it for exorbitant prices on Amazon and eBay.
I’m not currently looking for any out of print books, but can I just complain about how much I HATE the most recent covers of the Lioness Quartet?
My covers were VERY nineties, all bright jewel colours and ott pictures of Alanna and her cat/sword/horse on them, but some of the most recent covers make the series look like on of those supernatural love triangle books. And there’s nothing wrong with that kind of book, but the Lioness Quartet is not that kind of book
Oh god I hate those covers. Alanna, George, and Jon all look like they’ve shopped at whatever Tortall’s equivalent of The Gap is.
HOW ARE THEY SO TERRIBLE?????? They look like cast-off Charmed ads. Alanna looks like seasons 6 Willow Rosenberg, which is a fine thing to be but is not who Alanna is!
I am seeking a copy of Lady Knight that is in paperback, but not the swirly purple cover. Kel is the least swirly-person maybe in the whole world, so I am not OK with that shit.
Ugh, ugh yes. I finally decided that I needed a copy of Wild Magic (obviously not the Alanna books, but suffering a similar fate), and was so irritated by the generic single-coloured-photo-of-a-girl kind of thing they had going on that I stomped off to ebay and, to my delight, found the cover of my childhood (which was the besssst) at a very reasonable price.
I have different editions of the first and last two, which has pained me for years. I didn’t realise there were four until years after I’d read the first two!
Could we come to some kind of consensus about how the last decade of S/F book covers have been THE WORST?
If not, I’ll just go sit in the corner and twitch.
I stab the photo/realistic covers so much. Especially the ones with the women with the lower back tattoos twisted in almost (literal) comic book poses.
I’m pretty sure I have the editions you had, they were great, and the glowy 90s teenager ones are awful.
HOWEVER, if it’s any consolation, they just put out a boxed set that looks much nicer! I almost bought it even though I own them all already. http://amzn.com/1481416499
I know what you mean! I still have my nineties-tastic Lioness books, but it bugs me that my Trickster’s Choice/Queen books do not at ALL match them. They’re very much the “disembodied girl glamour shot” style that everything is in these days. My roommate refers to them as “the faces books” and refuses to read them.
You mean these covers? These are the nineties-fabulous covers I had.
Can I thank you, Queen, for reminding me that these books exist and my baby queer nerd self was totally obsessed with them? Oh god I hope they are still in my childhood home somewhere when I go hunting for them this March.
I remember specifically my mom not really wanting to buy them for me after she read the author bio where Tamora Pierce describes herself as a witch or somehow occult (?).
No, my covers were the UK edition and looked somewhat like this:
Baby Owl Queen was OBSESSED with these books. I took them out of the library so often (and was the only person to do so in my town) that at the end of the year they sold the books to my parents.
My mum was a hippy feminist so you can bet she was very pleased to have books like this on her daughters shelf.
Octavia Butler’s first novel, Survivor. The only work by her I have never read, and unless something changes never will, since it’s out of print and the used copies are crazy pricey. (Like three or four hundred dollars, even when you can find one.)
At the risk of pointing out the obvious…interlibrary loan? There are 300-odd copies in libraries in the US, probably at least one of them would loan you one. It’s not the same as owning, I know, but at least it’s a chance to read it.
There’s actually a PDF online. Just Google “octavia butler survivor” and scroll down a bit.
I spent over $30 on an out of print Babylon 5 novel. Lord help me.
I collect the Serendipity book series, some of which are notoriously difficult to find and/or expensive. Some of them beat you over the head with morals, but the illustrations are what always got me.
I’m also a sucker for old editions of books I love, or limited edition books about fashion or etiquette. They’re so much fun!
My sister gets our son one of those books every birthday; I had no idea they were out of print! The illustrations are fantastic.
I have been collecting them for years and it is a blow that my kids have absolutely no interest in them, not Morgan, not the bunny ones, none of them. So I keep them on *my* bookshelf and half-forbid them to take them out of my room and hope they’ll be tempted that way! Still no dice, so far….
I loved those books as a kid! I saved them for ages – I hope they’re still floating around my parents’ house.
Awww I remember those as a kid. My mom has/had a big stack of them around somewhere from 25odd years ago. Will have to see if she still has them.
I loved those growing up! I think Leo the Lop was my favorite. I think I have Flutterby, picked up from the library book sale.
I have a few in stock any they are super cheap (and if you’re in the US I’ll ship for free) just track me down at Rickert & Beagle Books –Chris R
When I was a kid, I started reading a science fiction novel called Ark of Venus. The book belonged to the school and I had to read it in the classroom. We moved out of town before I finished it. I was haunted by it for years, wondering if the family and their space monkey ever made it out of the lush but deadly jungles of Venus.
In the mid-nineties, I started thinking about the book again and was able to find a copy buried in the hidden-from-public-view stacks of a library.
And I read it. It was terrible.
These days, I could probably find a review of it somewhere on the internet that would save me the trouble.
Ah the Suck Fairy – she can be a jealous fiend with books you once loved…
I’m pretty sure it’s out of print and I’ve given away my only copy to a friend, but — A Candle in Her Room by Ruth M. Arthur has haunted me for years. A creepy doll! A story told over three generations! A beachside family home! The best!
Ooh, I loved all of Ruth M. Arthur’s novels (or at least all the ones I could get my hands on at my public library when I was a kid), and that was the first one I read, and probably my favorite.
Most of the Histories of Middle-earth. The first five are easy enough to find, but the last seven are nearly impossible. I don’t know that they’re actually out of print, but it took me months of trawling Amazon, AbeBooks (I do not recommend that site) and Thriftbooks to track down copies. Now I have all twelve, and I shall become an even more insufferable Tolkien purist. Nobody will ever watch the movies with me again, alas.
I also collect Golden Age science fiction. I own hundreds of cheaply printed, disintegrating paperbacks. Some of these books have been out of print for longer than I’ve been alive. I love them all (it’s love/hate with Heinlein’s stuff: fuck that guy). I have so many books that I had to write an Android app to maintain the catalog, because my memory is only so reliable. /humblebrag
Used bookstores are where it’s at. I make irregular pilgrimages to Uncle Hugo’s Science Fiction Bookstore in Minneapolis, where I buy as many books as I can afford. I haven’t been since getting a full-time job. I wonder if I can find more than 100 books next time. For online used book sellers, I cannot recommend Thriftbooks.com highly enough. I’ve bought over two hundred books from them alone, with no problems and excellent customer service. Wait for coupon codes, though.
Totally off-topic: I just ate lunch next to the Hey Ladies. It was amazing/awful. They dissected every one of their friends’ romantic relationships, then moved onto exes. I wish I’d taken notes. Best quote, regarding New Year’s plans: “OMG, I need to make a spreadsheet with all of my options.”
Replying to myself here, as I forgot to say a few things, probably because I get so excited when I’m talking about books.
Project Gutenberg is also pretty sweet. I’m working through the d’Artagnan Romances right now, courtesy of PG. Public domain works only, of course, but you can always check out PG Australia for old, but not quite United States-public domain works, like Gone With the Wind and the last collection of Sherlock Holmes short stories. Or so I hear.
I want to track down copies of some of the extended Little House series on behalf of my sister. The originals are always easy to find, as is the Rose series, but some of the Martha/Charlotte/Caroline books aren’t available for less than $50. I love my sister, but not that much.
One book that I would pay $50 for a copy of is Under This Roof by Borghild Dahl. In middle school, I found an ancient copy in my hometown’s public library, and when I went to look for it years later, it was gone.
I find that the more Tolkien I read, the more fun it is to pick apart the Peter Jackson movies. Movie!Elrond suddenly makes sense when you realize he’s been inexplicably possessed by the spirit of Thingol. (You can tell that what they really, really wanted to do all along was a Silmarillion movie. Bless you, Christopher Tolkien, for denying them that chance.)
I love the Silmarillion, but I would probably hate it as a movie.
Christopher Tolkien: we are not worthy. Not only has he thwarted further Peter Jackson-led travesties, but he gave us the Silmarillion and the Histories of Middle-earth.
The thing about the Silmarillion is there’s enough material for a dozen movies, at least, and you just know they’d never get a fair shake in Hollywood. So Christopher Tolkien putting the kibosh on that is probably for the best.
I have long argued that the ideal form for Silmarillion movies is a series of short film competitions.
Oh I LOVE that idea. A Tolkien film festival!
Would also work well as a True Detective style TV series.
I have #1-5 and #12, but need a copy of #10 (Morgoth’s Ring) like burning. Thank God for the public library. I didn’t realize the rest were going to be that hard to get.
Also a Tolkien nerd, but I like some of the stuff they have done with the movies. The Tauriel/Kili thing I liked because it broke up the tedium of endless battle and was kind of clever and different. But they only half explained the Thrain business and didn’t mention the Dwarven ring at all and thus wasted some really potentially informative Thorin back story. Plus the two orcs armies thing and the Azog thing and the going to Gundabad in one day which is not possible was just bullshit overkill. A dwarf/elf romance seems more reasonable than that pile of poo.
I was so disappointed by the Thrain stuff. And really all of Thorin’s backstory; the Dwarves in the Third Age do some amazing, traumatic shit, and none of it made it into the movies.
Seriously. The movies really made me like the dwarves for the first time, but for all the attention to detail on their costumes and appearances, their backstory remains murky and unseen. The house of Durin has as much tragedy as Aragorn’s family.
I used to think that Christopher Tolkien was a bit overwrought in his response to the PJ’s Lord of the Rings movies. Now, I think I owe him an apology, and Peter Jackson owes him a particularly heartfelt apology. So disappointed by so many things. Like characterization, the near-total lack thereof.
JGlo, if you’re looking for Morgoth’s Ring, here is a link to a $12 plus shipping copy. AbeBooks isn’t very reliable in my experience, but they’ve always refunded me if necessary. I remember #10 being oddly hard to track down, so it might be worth a gamble to you.
THANK YOU!!!
What’s fun about old science fiction is that Half-Price Books bases the price on the cover price, so if a book was $1.29 when it was printed, you can buy it for like $0.65, and then you get SO MANY BOOKS. (And fuck Heinlein, seriously).
Once I got a book for $0.25. Good times.
I’ve been thinking of starting a Tumblr that’s nothing but awful Heinlein quotes, but I don’t have that kind of time. If I ever build a time machine, he’s first on my dick-punching list.
I haven’t started searching for the Histories of Middle-earth, but I have had my eye out for The Adventures of Tom Bombadil since I spotted it at an antique shop for $112 a few years ago. The cheapest copy I can find on Amazon is 140 frickin’ dollars. Ughghghghghhhh. Why the hell is this shit out of print? I don’t have any children, but I would sure as hell sit down with all my young and impressionable cousins and force the amazing lore of Tom Bombadil upon them until they’d all decided to grow up and become magical woodspeople. But no, I can’t, because it would cost me $140 to do so.
And I ALSO collect Golden Age SF books! I used to live in Columbia, MO where this one antique shop randomly had an entire section of them. I ended up with quite a few Heinleins myself. There was also a book detailing the development of Golden Age SF cover illustrations that I put on hold once, but forgot to pick up. I still regret that and have kept my eyes out for it ever since.
I’ll have to check out Uncle Hugo’s if I’m ever in the Minneapolis area (and will plan on bringing a large suitcase with me).
What shop in Colombia? I live in STL, so I’m only a couple hours away! Good use book stores are worth their weight in gold.
Check this out: revised and expanded edition, published October 9th.
I’ve never met anyone else who collects Golden Age SF before! Who are you, you fascinating stranger? I have a semi-anonymous gmail that I don’t mind posting here if you want to talk outside of the comment section. Or if you’re leery of internet strangers, I totally understand.
I now have a huge need to visit Minneapolis. Uncle Hugo’s sounds like heaven.
Also, Thriftbooks just gave me so many books. I’m in love.
I also went through the Tolkien-buying experience years ago! I was a kid and didn’t know as much about buying books online, but I managed to get some of the really hard-to-find hardbacks through Ebay. I’m not as obsessed as I used to be, but I can’t let them go.
Delayed delurking to say I would ABSOLUTELY watch the movies with you. Watched the new Hobbit a few days ago and I need a palate cleanser. (Also I live in St Paul so–only partially kidding about watching them with you!)
I just want the original Patrick Bear books with the original illustrations, not this pupil-ed garbage: http://www.amazon.com/Patrick-Eats-Peas-Other-Sto…
Weird, these were a completely buried memory until just now! The original illustrations are much better, no? Like grumpy, cramped, uncomfortable in a really evocative way.
When I was a kid, I started reading a science fiction novel called Ark of Venus. The book belonged to the school and I had to read it in the classroom. We moved out of town before I finished it. I was haunted by it for years, wondering if the family and their space monkey ever made it out of the lush but deadly jungles of Venus.
Ugh. Accidental double post. Sorry.
But.
Look at this glorious collection of awful book covers, most if not all of them out of print, I dare say.
http://boingboing.net/2014/12/30/superbly-awful-l…
I’m looking for “Good Morning, Young Lady” by Ardyth Kennally. I read it as a teenager, and I’ve never found it again. It has orphans. Butch Cassidy! True Love! Betrayal.
Good god, I remember that! I haven’t thought of it in decades, and now I want to reread it too.
Aw I’m sorry to be disruptive because this is about an out of print book that I GOT, but I have been dying to tell people about it: for Christmas my dad got me a copy of Johm Michael Greer’s translation of Girard Thibault’s Academy of the Sword, an extremely rare 17th century Spanish rapier fencing manual. Even though they just printed it in 2006, there’s only like four copies available anywhere; when I wanted to borrow it from the library, the only one in the US that had a copy to send me was a library in Cleveland.
Anyway, I can’t help you get your own copy but if you are very interested in late 16th early 17th century Spanish rapier fencing of the Verdadera de la Destreza school let me know and I will send you pictures or something.
I hope there is a feature article about this in the next issue of Dad magazine!
INSIDE!
Old Books About Swords!
Where to Find Them!
What to Do with Them!
I think there needs to be an advice column in which all the answers are adapted from Thibault’s manual.
They reference that in the Princess Bride!
A timely blog post! This morning I caved and bought myself a (signed, limited edition) copy of The Disfavored Hero by Jessica Salmonson. She wrote these Japanese-esque fantasy novels called the Tomoe Gozen Saga that I’ve been trying to get a hold of for a while. After trying and failing to get them from the library, I decided to pony up and buy the series. And then I learned that she re-edited the first novel and published it in a spiffy edition.
Oh man, I would give a fair amount for “Our USA – A Gay Geography” illustrated by Ruth Taylor White to come across my book-buying path. What a champ illustrator, I mean look at this: https://www.raremaps.com/maps/medium/32273.jpg
H.M. Hoover’s silly but glorious science fiction. Away Is a Strange Place to Be, The Winds of Mars, This Time of Darkness, all excellent. I think a few have been reprinted now, but they aren’t the same, and I could only find a few.
‘Lost Queen of Egypt’ by Lucile Morrison. I have not seen that book since I was twelve and if I’d only known then that it would be going for insane amounts of money online in the future… Darn my middle school aversion to book stealing.
That was the one about Akhenaten’s daughter, right? With a totally improbable ending?
I haven’t seen it since I was twelve, either.
Yep. I loved it with all my middle school heart even if now I can only vaguely remember anything about it. (So clearly I still didn’t love it as much as nine year old me loved ‘The Perilous Gard’ since I still somehow remember pretty much every damn thing about that one. Ruined elves for me forever.) Somehow I don’t think it was a good enough read to be worth $200 now on amazon.
I need Philip Harben’s “The Grammar of Cookery”. It is just the best.
Out of print DVD: Drop Dead Gorgeous. My copy disappeared some time ago. I know I can get it on Amazon, but it’s a pisser. That movie is fucking amazing.
Billy & Betty by “Twiggs Jameson”. America’s funniest dirty book; contains America’s funniest made-up dirty words. Grove Press from the late 1960s I think. Out of print for most of the last 40 years, but it doesn’t matter much because every used bookstore has a copy somewhere. (Also, can you guess how “Twiggs Jameson” has never had his identity revealed in all this time?)
Oh man, this thread is perfection. I’ve been looking for a copy of Gary Gygax’s Extraordinary Book of Names by, uh, Gary Gygax, for forever. It’s apparently an amazing reference for names from all sorts of different languages and culture, both listing names and explaining how names and name/surname combinations from various cultures are constructed. It went out of print when Gygax died (and the rights reverted to his wife, who hasn’t re-sold them), and I’ve never been able to find a copy online for less than $80-$100, which is just a bit north of what I’d be willing to buy it for (I could do $50, I think). So if anyone has a copy they don’t want to keep, I’d love to give it a good home.
That sounds really cool, will have to keep an eye out.
Mine is weirdly specific- it is an out of print unrevised edition of a Star Trek novel, Killing Time.
See, Killing Time is an 80s cliche slash fic. No, seriously, it is absolute classic early Trek fandom slashfic nonsense that the author somehow, inexplicably, got published. Until the publishers worked out it was a slashfic and demanded a revised one that was less gay, so the version most easily found is a (still admittedly really obviously a slashfic) revised edition.
I need a hardcopy of this book in my life. I just do. It’ll complete my fannish life. Copies do pop up, but it’s difficult to determine online whether they’re the revised edition or not- the only real difference is whether the title is raised or not on the cover.
The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader
My favorite author, Catherynn Valente, has a number of books out-of-print that I want so much. Also Who Censored Rodger Rabbit, the book that the movie is based on, is no where to be found, for a reasonable price, that is.
YES CAT VALENTE. I’ve been trying to get a copy of her super limited Ghosts of Gunkanjima forever.
Oh, which ones? I’ve got a few copies of her early books I’m not particularly attached to!
The Secret Circle trilogy (high school coven goodness)
Aside–MrChouffe spent months digging up out of print/hard to find books and making them into a headboard for our bed for my Xmas present this year and it has A Wrinkle in Time and a bunch of Holmes and a bunch of Aubrey/Maturin AND THE STORY OF O, and it is all rather too much 😀
It basically looks like this:
I have two of the three Secret Circle books, bought from my local library. I don’t know what happened to the third. 🙁 Aren’t they in print, though? I thought they were republished as two books a few years ago.
OMG I HAD NO IDEA
also apparently there was a TV show on CW?? brb, never working again
Glad to have been of service!
The TV series sounds like it has taken serious liberties with the plot.
Yeah, it reeeeeeeally does. Not totally unexpected. :-/
The TV show was sorta lame but show Faye was AMAZING. Call me, Phoebe Tonkin.
That is amazing! And beautiful.
If you haven’t already married him, MARRY HIM. What a gift!!!
Sept 27. I am literally counting the days.
Was that the series where she had her own Book of Shadows? And she moved to some New England town and discovered she had a witch bloodline? I read those at just the right time (14 years old), and had a brief but intense Wicca fixation. I never knew there was a TV series!
That was it!!
I got a boatload of out of print Vera Caspary books for Christmas. Thank you Amazon wishlist and my brother who doesn’t like to think too hard about gifting. I hope to read more out of print things from the ladies of the classic noir period in 2015, upending the genre and whatnot. SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE DUDE AUTHORS.
Just look at this amazing cover art:
Even if I never read Laura a second time it will make me happy to have it on my shelf.
Ooh, that’s a section of a genre I had no idea I wanted to get into until just now. Besides Vera Caspary, any other recommendations?
Not out of print, but I started things off reading the excellent compilation Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense which reprinted short stories from a lot of different authors to get a feel for who I liked.
Besides Caspary, I’m fond of Margaret Millar, Joyce Harrington, Patricia Highsmith, and Mignon Eberhart. Margaret Millar’s story “The People Across the Canyon” from Troubled Daughters was probably my hands down favorite. I still think about it sometimes.
There’s a Celia Fremlin short story in there, I think. Her books are mostly out of print, and I’m crushed by that. I read several collections of her short stories years ago, and they were devastating — like, “Ruth Rendell is a pale version of Celia Fremlin” kind of devastating.
Her books are SO HARD to find.
Just wanted to say that I googled her on this recommendation and found that Faber Firsts have her as Print on demand with the greatest covers I’ve seen in a long time. They’re definitely available in Australia and the UK, perhaps you can finangle an outlet to send you some?
http://www.faber.co.uk/catalogsearch/result/index…
Sweet, thanks!
The Feminist Press has reissued a bunch of lady pulp in their Femmes Fatales series: http://www.feministpress.org/books/fp-series/femm…
(Haven’t read most of these, so can’t make specific recommendations, but thought this might be a good place for you to start!)
I would read that blog so hardcore.
Also, I have Stranger in a Strange Land. I feel like if I read Heinlein, that’s the book it’s got to be. Am I accurate in my assessment, or should I just not?
It’s probably the one where if you say “I hate Heinlein” people are going to be like, “but what about Stranger in a Strange Land?!?!” So if you want to be able to have that conversation (which is entirely up to you; I feel like there are many, many conversations I would prefer to have instead), you should probably read it.
If you already have a copy and you’re curious about the fuckwittery, I’d say go for it. It will fill you with seething feminist rage, but that’s what Heinlein is for.
If you’re not sure about jumping into Stranger, because it’s pretty heavy on the mytho-philosophizing or whatever you call it, you could try one of his juvenile novels from the 1950s. Tunnel in the Sky has everything: young male douchelord protagonist, strong independent woman who don’t need no– wait lemme marry a much older man and have tons of babies, and a more manageable dose of political and survivalist soapboxing. It’s still rage-inducing, but shorter than Stranger. You’ll be able to throw it farther upon finishing.
I remember snagging a used copy at a bookstore in Butte, MT, so I’m sure that’s still around. If not, I know there’s a copy on my Kindle.
…Maybe I’ll just finish Dune and the other stacks of unread books first. Then re-read David Brin.
True – Tunnel in the Sky, Farmer in the Sky, Have Spacesuit & etc., Space Beast – the juveniles get less space to piss me off, and the rage doesn’t last as long.
Stranger just goes on and on. and on and on. and on. and… you get the picture.
Stranger in a Strange Land is probably the one to go for, but I’m throwing in a vote for I Will Fear No Evil because it is BONKERS.
Or Moon is a Harsh Mistress for straight up bonkers along a different axis? With less bonus creepy old dude, if I remember correctly.
Just saw these comments now, excuse the late reply.
I Will Fear No Evil is completely batshit bonkers. I have to read it a chapter at a time, otherwise I’ll end up setting shit on fire from the sheer force of my misandrist rage.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has its fair share of lunacy (see what I did there), but I remember it being one of the more enjoyable Heinleins. My memory may be misleading me here: I just like sentient computers in my science fiction.
Moon is a Harsh Mistress is interesting for the things he thought would and wouldn’t be happening on the moon, and the fact that a sentient computer would still print things out. There are still no women as people, which is annoying. The dudes are human and mean well.
I believe people are, in general, less likely to catch on fire from the foolishness of it.
Stranger tends to be a polarizing read. I have had better luck rereading older ones, like Have Spacesuit Will Travel. The shorter, juvenile books give him less room to massively piss me off than the doorstop books that came later. Also I made several huge personal mistakes while under the influence of Stranger, and I wound up burning it in the woodstove because we were out of paper and kindling in the Blizzard of 1978.
You could just not – that is a completely reasonable decision.
It depends on why you want to read Heinlein. He’s actually an interesting author – he was kind of ahead of his time (in that he actually wrote female leads) but he’s far, far behind our time. And it’s interesting to see what he got right and wrong about the future.
If you’re looking for a good hate read, try Friday – it’s full of WTFery and enough misogyny to make your head explode. The lead character is a bi, polyamorous woman but she group marries one of her rapists.
I want, I want, I want a copy of Barry Hughart’s “The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox”. I have A Bridge of Birds and I love it, but the latter two are out of print, and although you can get digital copies in America, you can’t over here. I will probably fold one day and buy paperbacks off ebay, but shipping from America is often dire, and in truth I really want the omnibus, which is really a tall ask. But I have PTSD, and the books speak to it in the best and most beautiful way of anything I have ever found, and make me feel that beauty can coexist with it and live entwined with it and still be ok. So one day, I will need those books.
I’ve got digital copies of all three if you want them.
I would like that very much.
Email address? I can stick them on dropbox and send a link.
jaseroque at gmail etc. I really appreciate it.
No problem at all, have sent!
Oh no, I got the digital copy of this for Christmas also (I just finished A Bridge of Birds and I also love it). Is there a way I can share it with you? Is it just unavailable for download, or is there some kind of zone proscription on it or something?
I think it’s just a store limitation thing — it’s simply not offered in the online stores here, and workarounds for that are tricksy and annoying. I can actually SEE the books if I’m looking for them on my computer, but there is no ‘buy’ link. It is… rather frustrating.
Well, if your superior plan with Es_Petal doesn’t work out (“Oh, I’m Es_Petal, I responded first, I have digital copies, I know how to use dropbox, mleh mleh mleh,” he complained, huffily) let me know, we can see if it’s lendable.
Hahaha, I appreciate that also.
You can share with me, if you want! (…er, are willing.) I don’t know this author at all but the book sounds fascinating.
The books are lovely and delightful, and if braak’s aren’t lendable then give me an email address and I can send you the link since they’re up there anyway!
mleh mleh mleh indeed. 🙂
elitistsemicolon at gmail etc. Thank you!!
Very well! but there are rules. The book can only be loaned once, and only for fourteen days. So, you must wait until I am done (this will probably be by the weekend). Then let me know when you are ready and send me your email address, and I will send it to you!
You can email me at cebraak (at) gmail &c.
Aaaaaaaaaaah no way I’d be able to read all that in fourteen days! But thank you. 😀
ETA: In response to Genny_
So I’m emailing my stepfather to see if we have the book and what edition it is. We have so many ST books it’s obnoxious, and I’m pretty sure I’ve read them all.
ALSO
This link is supposedly a full PDF copy of the first edition. I can’t read it right now, but I’m going to save it myself and take a long look at it later. It looks like someone actually typed it up. https://7chan.org/lit/src/Della-van-Hise-Killing-…
This is a book I actually found after years of thinking it was some sort of fever dream but I can’t recommend it highly enough and I keep hoping it will become popular enough to warrant re-printing someday- The Merro Tree by Katie Waitman. I don’t know anyone irl who reads this sort of thing but thought I’d mention it here because it might appeal to some Toasties. It’s a sci-fi/fantasy about censorship and the nature of art told as a coming-of-age story, interspersed with scenes from a courtroom drama. It has a hard-boiled journalist being confronted with his prejudices and getting over his shit and the main character is in a same-sex, polyamorous, interspecies relationship with a giant, sentient snake. Overcoming childhood trauma! Found families! Teaching tolerance through cultural exchange! The only thing that could make it better would have been if the lead was female. It was in the YA section at the library I went to as a kid and for years I figured I had made it up. (As a side note, when you find it on Amazon the only item listed under “Customers also Bought” is a pheromone based wall plug-in for stressed out cats. Amazing.)
Welp I’ll be buying a copy of that.
this sounds amazing
I have that wall plug in.
but have you bought a timer for it yet
Mrs. Beeton’s Everyday Cookery!
Best cookbook ever. If you tire of the wonderful 19th c. recipes (still make-able and often good), you can read about the cell biology of vegetables and how to make gelatin out of horses’ hooves at home. And how to manage servants and children. I have only browsed it at a friend’s house, but would love to own it, someday.
There’s a cute little reissue with a blueish cover I see every day at work! Looks like it’s around 6 bucks on Amazon.
Project Gutenberg has a lot of Beeton and — oh! — there’s a whole Mrs Beeton website:
http://www.mrsbeeton.com/
Her biography is good, too. The Beetons ran periodicals with letters-to-the-editor communities that are delightfully proto-blog.
Still trying to track down all the Lloyd Alexander/Prydwen Chronicles stuff with covers matching those from my childhood. Oh, and Earthsea! I wait… AND POUNCE when I stumble across them in Powell’s. Not even first prints, just 80s prints!
I do need some PKD first editions though (Cosmic Puppets, Doctor Futurity…). Those have gotten pricey lately, so as the number diminishes, the difficulty increases. Challenge accepted!
I scored copies of Uncanny X-Men 105 and 106 lately…bringing the total # needed to complete a complete Uncanny run down to…4!
Are these the covers you’re thinking of?
Some of them…yes. I had to go dig through my piles. That Taran Wanderer cover isn’t doing it for me – I think I must have had a mix of the colored pencil looking hardcovers and some of those softcovers? Or I could be remembering library books! Making me feel old because I can’t remember straight.
Oh god, the Prydwen Chronicles was a major favorite in middle school! Every now and then I think about hunting them down.
I’ve got them digitally if you want!
That would be amazing!
Send me an email address and I will dropbox them!
potter (dot) potterson (at) gmail (dot) com should work!
Sent! Happy Eilonwying.
But…but…what about the old pages smell? How can you survive!?
So, I found a copy of a book called “The Ardent Infidels” at a book sale way back in my teen years and one of the first things I looked up when I got the internet, also many years ago, was the author – Maurice Druon. Apparently it was some 70s translation of “The Iron King” and was always way out of my price range (and my mom had tossed my copy because it looked wonderfully torrid and horrible and just full of sleazy goodness). A couple years ago “The Iron King” was kindlized and I bought it, expecting all the sordid romping of Fourteenth century French royalty I remembered and, well, it was a bummer. I’m really not sure if I read a really amped up translation way back when or if I was just easily titillated or what. And I apologize if this is barely readable and not truly about an out-of-print book – no one else understands how this has vexed me (oh, how it has vexed me)!
We had a copy of the Dune Encyclopedia in our middle school library! I read the first book and then read the encyclopedia cover to cover. Couldn’t continue with the books not because I’d been spoiled but because I was upset at the dismal fates of my favorite characters (Duncan Idaho but ESPECIALLY Alia) and refused out of protest.
Beyond that, there was a time as a young child when my family took me to the Chicago Planetarium and we got a book called “Science Made Stupid” that was a very borscht belt-y satire of children’s science textbooks. It was awesome. There’s a site that basically recreates it! http://www.besse.at/sms/smsintro.html
Also there is a photo book called “100 Suns” that contains high-quality prints of American nuclear test photos, along with crazy stories from them, my fav was the one about ppl covering their eyes during a blast and seeing the bones in their hands through their eyelids due to x-ray exposure. Wild!
The holy grail for me has been England’s Hidden Reverse, a super super super duper limited run book (handmade, initially) that documents three great and infamous British avant garde bands in the context of England’s history of eccentrics / occultists / gay warlocks and the like. The cheapest used copy on Amazon is $235, which is actually really cheap! I’d tried to find one at the big indie bookstores but came up empty.
*e – dang it looks like 100 Suns got a reprint! It’s $50 on Amazon.
oh man they have a PDF of Science Made Stupid! It’s just as awesome as I remember. Way advanced for a kids’ book too, I actually learned stuff http://www.chrispennello.com/tweller/
The Little World of Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi and translated by whoever translated the copy my mother read to me as a kid. Do I know who translated that copy? NO, I DO NOT. Sigh.
I have a hard cover omnibus of Don Camillo and you can pry it from my cold dead hands.
Nothing comes to mind as far as actual books go, but I am sentimental about YA books where the cover art has changed since I first read them. If anyone has a copy of Tamora Pierce’s “Shatterglass” with the original art, I will buy it from you. (The new one has some generic-looking girl on it–you can’t see her face, she’s way too skinny, and her hair isn’t even in BRAIDS for Christ’s sake.)
On the bright side, though, I have just found that you can buy international editions of Tamora Pierce’s books on Amazon, and the Japanese cover art is anime as hell and I kind of want them.
That Japanese cover art made my day!
I’m not currently looking for any out-of-print books, though this thread has reminded me that I need to dig up a copy of “Momo,” by Michael Ende (not out-of-print, just kind of obscure). BUT, can I just say that I recently discovered how great it is to have an old Luddite dad who doesn’t know you can buy things online?
It goes like this:
-Luddite Dad reminisces about a thing he read or saw 30+ years ago
-Luddite Dad expresses regret that he will never experience it again because it can’t be found at B&N/the local library/FYE.
-Tech-Savvy Daughter nods sympathetically and makes a mental note
-Come holiday-or-birthday-time, Tech-Savvy Daughter finds the thing he was reminiscing about in about 30 seconds on Amazon
-Luddite Dad is astounded at Tech-Savvy Daughter’s thoughtfulness and tech-savvy.
Seriously. Last year I got him this book of orchestra-themed cartoons (http://www.amazon.com/The-Hoffnung-Symphony-Orchestra-Gerard/dp/0285626167), and this year I got him an old BBC adaptation of his favorite John le Carre novel.
In the category of “books I used to check out from the library all the time when I was growing up”: There was a whole series of story anthologies edited by Seon Manley and Gogo Lewis, mostly collections of horror or fantasy fiction by women authors, with titles like Ladies of Horror, Mistresses of Mystery, Ghostly Gentlewomen and so on — they came out in the 1970s, and Edward Gorey did the covers of at least some of them. I keep meaning to try to assemble myself a set by hunting them all down on Bookfinder. I know they’re out there, I just never see them in secondhand bookstores.
Also, Magical Changes by Graham Oakley, a wordless, gloriously weird, split-page picture book. Probably helped shape my love of all things surreal and bizarre.
“The Prevalence of Witches” by Aubrey Menen. I’ve never read a book quite like it.
All Winifred Watson’s books that are not Miss Pettigrew.
The Folio Society Mapp and Lucia.
Zenna Henderson’s scary stories.
They just reprinted the Henderson People stories, didn’t they? I love all the weird wispy ones that are about schools with neglected but magical kids, and the one where the pre-puberty kids get telepathy and the pubescent ones are locked out still makes me sad.
“The Whicharts” by Noel Streatfeild, which is the adult-level prototype for “Ballet Shoes.” The first chapter I found online somewhere was delightful and just made me want it more. But it costs A LOT online and is not available in US libraries. Sigh…
WHAT, I did not know this was a thing but now I want it badly.
See, it’s terrible, isn’t it? I can only hope that at some point it will be financially worthwhile for whoever owns the rights to put out an ebook…
My parents got me this for Christmas! (It was on my list.) My dad asked me why it was worth £26.
I would snap it up for 26 pounds! On US Amazon it’s like $125.
I will die for a copy of Peake’s Rhyme of the Flying Bomb. I don’t need a physical copy, I don’t need the illustrations, however lovely, I juuuust waaant to reeead the poeeem
Edwards, Elwyn Hartley, Horses: Their Role in the History of Man, London: Willow, 1987
This is the companion book to a TV mini-series that ran on PBS (and probably BBC) in the mid 1980’s. I don’t care about the book. I DESPERATELY want to find the show. My parents have a bit of it on VHS that I watched until the tape was all green and wibbly. Mr. Edwards does some segments on the history of tack and bits, but I believe the show was hosted by a british actor who did some horsey movies.
I would think that I hallucinated the thing based on the information you can find about it online, except for one person who mentions its existence in a comment on Edwards’ obit. (really)
ETA: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=di41AAAAIBAJ…
At least I have confirmed it was a thing that happened. Does one just… call… the BBC and ask for it?
Sheri S Tepper’s True Game novels! With the original artwork that runs the gamut from 70’s garish to vaguely classical and ethereal. Especially the Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped; I ran into her at quite a young age and she’s my first feminist hero.
Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress: The Fashion of Frida Kahlo.
Copies on Amazon start at $89.90. Sob sob sob. http://www.amazon.com/Self-Portrait-Velvet-Dress-…
She Was Nice to Mice, by Ally Sheedy (yes, that Ally Sheedy). Read it as a kid, and is why I love historical fiction to this day. Also, for some reason the only Tarzan books I liked as a kid were ones not written by E.R. Burroughs, and are consequently impossible to find today – The Lost Safari, and The City of Gold.
I want a copy of Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon, but I need to see the TV adaptation starring Bette Davis as Crazy New England Hedge-Witch. Neeeeeeeeeed.
This is the TV adaptation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k96YP3D31Uo
Bette Davis is amazing, as always.
Three terrible words
“The Pirate Bay”
Come to the dark side. We have cookies and sometimes out-of-print books.
In middle school, a classroom library had a copy of “Gold By Gemini” by Jonathan Gash that I fell in love with. It’s part of a 70’s antique dealer mystery series. It’s rather terrible, but I adore the series, and have since been able to find many copies in used bookstores in my city. I refuse to buy books from websites on principle, so I have been unsuccessful in my quest for this particular book thus far.
Additionally, there’s this great press that reprints books by forgotten 20th century female writers, and I have read many delightful and amusing things through them, and you should go support them in their endeavors to bring these books back into circulation! Their editions also look beautiful. Check it out: http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/
I love Persephone. Their books are so great!
Do you guys know bookfinder.com? Searches all the other major book-selling sites together. Like kayak for books. Seems like it might help some people on this thread.
And there’s http://used.addall.com/ – a search engine for used and out-of-print books.
Didn’t know that one. Thanks!
My longed for books used to be out of print, but now they are back in print and I really need to get on the ball and buy the set before they go out of print again- the Sue Barton, Nurse series was a huge favorite of mine when I was a kid and my library only had maybe 5 books from the series (not even in sequence! but like #1, 2, 3, 5 and 7) it still kind of bothers me that I haven’t read the entire series…I think I’m talking myself into an order, here. (They were awesome- basically contemporary (well researched fiction about the nursing profession that is now historical fiction- really cool. And Sue kicks butt).
Oh, and the author, Helen Dore Boylston, supposedly hung out with Rose Wilder Lane (i.e. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter). And worked as a nurse on the front lines during WWI. So basically she’s awesome.
The publisher that’s reissuing them is also printing several other series written in the same time frame, all written about girls- http://www.imagecascade.com/helen-dore-boylston-b…
That’s great news. I grew up reading Sue Barton books – also Cherrie Ames, Trixie Belden, Judy Bolton etc. Some belonged to my mom when she was a girl, some were library books. Sue Barton was one of my favorites. I’m curious how well they hold up.
So…not technically out of print but who else spent years looking for the unabridged version of The Princess Bride before having to be told it didn’t exist? I must have looked in every bookstore in the DC area and not a single person informed me that it wasn’t real. I believed in it for like three years. I’m still not entirely convinced I won’t come across it in some old used bookstore somewhere.
I did this. I also spent an absurdly long time trying to find The horn of Joy from A Swiftly Tilting Planet.
Years. Years.
I did, however, find the “abridged” version in the donated books stack–I cannot even tell you how often I come across stuff there, and it’s a huge benefit of working in the same building as the library (we share a kitchenette, and oddly enough, that’s where the donated books go for sorting, so whenever I make tea I browse the books). It is in PERFECT condition, especially for a mass-market paperback, and I’ve been afraid to read it for fear of damaging it.
I own no fewer than five copies of the abridged version- including one in Spanish and one signed by William Goldman that I refuse to read. I’ll basically buy any version with a different cover. And now there’s an illustrated version that I HAVE to add to the collection.
Do you know about the missing chapter offer? In the book, there’s a note offering to send a copy of the text removed from the full version, probably (I can’t quite quite recall) if you mail in a self-addressed stamped envelope, which I always assumed was a joke.
But it’s no joke, and now it’s easier than ever. Harcourt will email you a piece of excised story, which just adds to the mythology of a vast expurgated version existing somewhere.
So I am pretty fine for out-of-print books, what with isbn.nu and the Internet and all, but I do have a story of pre-Internet days and an audiobook that I adored.
1. In my adolescence, I fell in love with Diana Wynne Jones’s Fire and Hemlock, which was out of print. When my generous father took me on a trip to the UK, I persuaded him to go to Hay-on-Wye, the British Paradise of Secondhand Bookstores. After searching through book shops unnumbered, I FOUND MY BOOK. Needless to say, it came back into print some 3 years later, but who cares, I had my copy.
2. I also loved Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain books (spelled differently in the US, perhaps?), but my favorite was the library’s book-on-tape of The Book of Three. The voice actor was charming, and especially for Gergi. I was going to buy the audiobook when I suddenly realized that the voice was not at all the adorable one of my childhood. However, upon further research this evening, I discovered that (what I think is) the recording I want is available for next to nothing! Here’s to buying cassette tapes for $3 and finding some way to digitize them!
oh man the voices of my youth! I had three LPs of Winnie the Pooh stories read by Maurice Evans who did all the voices. Those are in my head so hard that my kids could hear it when I was reading the stories to them. And I have the LPs still, but no easy way to digitalize them. And his Rabbit was a thing of BEAUTY….
Really we could use an entire thread for “ways to digitize what you’ve got there to a format you can use”
Fire and Hemlock is no joke my favourite, favourite book. I read it every year or so and it just gets better. Welcome, friend!
MINE TOO. I am never having a child, but if I did she’d be called Polly. (possibly even if I had a boy.)
I once decided to read the first chapter while at a B&N in high school. I emerged from the store hours later, dazed and confused and barely able to walk because my legs had fallen asleep.
HELLO FRIENDS! But I’m still not sure I understand what’s going on! Maybe I should give it another reread…
I find that with all her books, actually. She just pumped them so full of excellent bits, great scenes, perfect people and action, but she never really nailed the endings. Which I think is perfect, because who wants them to end? NOT I!
It’s my favorite as well!
I have named my iPhone Polly so it always appears as such when I plug it into my laptop. KIN.
Brilliant – polly-iphonic assistant?
I had never thought of that but on reflection I am mystified at myself.
I own all those and they are falling to shreds – I’ve been trying to find copies of the Marianne books for years with no success except for Marianne, the Magician & the Manticore. Her newest book is waiting on my bookshelf though, which is some consolation.
I’m also eternally searching for copies of Peter Bowen’s Montana mysteries featuring Gabriel Du Pre, Metis fiddler and brand inspector.
(this is @gabrielernest above, Intense Debate hates me)
One of the most treasured books in my family when I was growing up was Sinbad and Me by Kin Platt. Our copy was battered to begin with, and after my siblings and I had read it several times each, the spine had completely disintegrated and we had to start keeping the pages in a ziploc bag. I believe my sister paid over $100 for a better preserved copy a few years ago, and I think copies are just as expensive now…if you can even find them. Too bad, because I would love to have one for myself!
Oh yes yes yes!!! i have a copy of Sinbad and Me and it got moldy in one of the cellar flooding disasters (never never NEVER trust a New England cellar it will always be damp and produce mold, or flood or do something unkind and catastrophic) and I read it all disgusting anyways because it was AMAZING. It still is, mostly. And i can’t remember the name of the other Sinbad book, but I remember there were two? Maybe Which Witch…
I could try to make a copy of mine if you want?
My own out-of-print book sense has been forever skewed by working in a secondhand bookshop for two years, with my partner. We own enough old books to build a small house out of – in fact, upon buying our first house in March, one major criteria was having a formal lounge-type room that we could make into our library. We did, and we have. It is as satisfying as you might imagine.
Actually, my first-ever ebay purchase, many moons ago, was of the library book I read to death when I was a youngster: Beyond the rolling river, by Kate Andrews. I have vivid memories of filling out inter-library loan request forms for it almost every time we went to the library, and eventually we were told the only copy remaining had gone missing. It was a heavy-hearted day for me, thinking that I’d read it for the last time without even knowing, without being able to savour that final read. But then, ebay!
Because my girlfriend is a wonderful person, I own a copy of the UK Corgi edition of the Dune Encylopedia. I also remember a German version the library in my hometown had when I was a boy.
Ah! I have been trying to find an affordable version of my childhood favorite The Quangle Wangle’s Hat, since the one I had was gorgeously illustrated by Helen Oxenbury and all the newly illustrated versions look like they crawled out of a Candy Land reject box (sincere apologies to those who may love the newer illustrations, but its hard to replace a beloved childhood illustration). Obsessive reading and keeping-under-pillow (did anyone else sleep with their favorite books under their pillows as a child?) has worn it away to ragged loose sheets.
Wistfully sighing over Everard’s Ride by Diana Wynne Jones.
My library network has THREE COPIES. THREE.
Of all the out-of-print books I’ve pursued, the only thing popping into my head is the little list of out-of-print Laurie Colwin fiction that I buy every time I run across one in a used book store.
But it looks like Harper reissued all of Colwin’s fiction, even the more obscure collections of short stories, in 2000/2001, which I never knew since I’ve been scrounging all my copies from library booksales and cluttered bookstore shelves. That’s great news!
So the book I was going to list wasn’t out of print when I finally broke down and ordered it by mail, but the copy I bought was… and when my copy of Family Happiness finally arrived, I got a message from my sister, who was languishing with pneumonia, asking me to bring “ALL THE LAURIE COLWIN” when I came over to bring pho and movies, and instead of reading it in bed that night, I took it over to her house still in its mailing envelope. That’s love.
I yearn for paperbacks of the first three Pippi Longstocking books – the editions where her name is Pippilotta Delicatessen Windowshade Mackrelmint Efram’s Daughter Longstocking. For some reason her name has changed in more recent editions, and it drives me nuts. And of course the only way to tell is to open the book and see…
I have been trying for a while to track down all of Eleanor Arnason’s hwarhath stories, which is hellish difficult, since they’ve never been collected, and were originally published in SF magazines. Gardner Dozois’ Best of SF collections have some of them, but they’re not easy to find either.
I’m also haunting the used bookstores for a copy of Joanna Russ’ The Country You Have Never Seen: Essays and Reviews, which has her reviews from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which were some of the best reviews of SF I’ve ever read. Amazon has it, at an astronomical price. I’m going to try interlibrary loan, but it’s really the sort of thing you want to have on your shelves forever.
Patricia McKillip’s _Stepping from the Shadows_, which is not as expensive as the last time I looked, hurrah. Is a female Künstlerroman, which, are there enough? No. <a href="http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=mckillip&sts=t&tn=stepping+from+the+shadows" target="_blank"> ;http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=…
_The Triumph of Individual Style_, which is the only truly all-shape-loving fashion book I have ever seen, using art from several continents and millenia to suggest how one might subdue *or emphasize* the contours of any body to lovely effect. I suppose the art rights make it hard to keep in print. THere are bits that cna be cut out, so be careful of used copies: <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/The-Triumph-Individual-Style-Dressing/dp/1563672693″ target=”_blank”> <a href=”http://;http://www.amazon.com/The-Triumph-Individual-Styl…” target=”_blank”>;http://www.amazon.com/The-Triumph-Individual-Styl…
Pretty much everything by Elizabeth Goudge (except Green Dolphin Street and Little White Horse, I own those). I loaned out my copy of City of Bells and I think the other person thought it was a gift. It’s my favorite and I need to own it.
Also “The Princess and the Lord of Night,” a splendid children’s book.
I actually found my Most Wanted OOP Book two years ago — on Etsy of all places.
It was a book I absolutely loved when I was very young.
Lois Wyse and Joan Javits, The Compleat Child. Cleveland, OH: The World Publishing Company, 1966.
An excerpt, for your delectation:
Writing a Letter
Did you ever rush to the mailbox
and wait and wait and wait — day after day after day
and not get a letter from someone who was supposed to send you a letter?
The child who didn’t write had disappointing manners.
Children with well-appointed manners answer letters promptly.
Their letters are full of newsy items…
They tell about Nana at the Veiled Prophet Ball
or Father’s bid for the governorship.
They tell where they have been (Paris, Rome, or Gristede’s)
and what they have done (the Louvre, the Colosseum, or peanut butter).
And they always say something about the other person…
For instance:
“How are you and do you still have chicken pox?”
Reward:
Their letters bring higher prices at Parke-Bernet.
I’ve been trying to find a hardback copy of The Gate to Women’s County and having no luck 🙁
(this was in response to the comment about Sherri Tepper above)
🙂
I have tried soo hard to find Changeover by Diana Wynne Jones for a reasonable price, because I am a completest and it is the only book by her that I haven’t read (aside from her last book, posthumously finished by her sister), and I may get it via inter-library loan but it would cost $30 and I would only be allowed to read it IN the library, which doesn’t fit within my schedule.
OMG, that's it, and somehow I didn't get a notification that anyone had replied! Thank you!
Yes! I once had one of these too! Soooooo much better than a thesaurus. I was like, “Why does no one know about this vastly improved thing!?” But alas, the thesaurus had saturated the market. My book of synonyms wandered off a long time ago. I still miss it.
Danzig – England's Hidden Reverse is being reprinted by Strange Attractor press this year.