Pictures of random valuable books I own. (Taken Today)

     I was looking for some Alan Dean Foster books to take pictures of to show them off to my brother who posts me things pretty regular lately, and only found a few on the first go around. Seeing things on the bottom of a pile I have not seen in years, I took some pictures of some pretty cool ones.. From left to right, top to bottom.

1) Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess 1st ed
2) The Naked Sun - Isaac Asimov 1st ed
3) Nine Tomorrows - Isaac Asimov 1st ed
4) The End of Eternity - Isaac Asimov 1st ed
5) Foundation - Isaac Asimov 1st ed (x2!)
6) Tanar of Puwesdfgsdfgrsdkfgdsjfsdfsidar - Borroughs (Pulp PB)
7) Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein 1st ed
8) Caves of Steel - Isaac Asimov 1st ed

     I have had many offers for the Heinlein PB. Its the most beat up damaged book in my collection and near worthless. Has pages like money.

More Pictures from Jared

     See a theme? Alan Dean Foster.. movies, Outland. My brother sends me pictures almost constantly. I love seeing other collections and often take pictures of my friends' collections as well. Love it, keep them coming.

Jared Shares Some Pictures

 

    Huge fan of the "The Thing" movie , and the book is great as well. My brother Jared is crazy about the movie and is recreating a room full of period office equipment in his house. Alan Dean Foster had many movie novelizations in the 80's and 90's, and Outland was unfortunatly one of them. Our facebook conversation:

 

 

My first edition of 'Outland' by Alan Dean Foster. I think they only made the one edition.

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  Major Asselin This is cool. The movie was terrible though.

  13 hours ago · Like
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  Jared Place You say that again and we are not brothers! Blasphemy. Sean Connery was, is and always shall be, The Man.

  38 minutes ago · Like
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  Major Asselin Sean Connery will always be the reason why i keep a beard, but that movie made my nuts hurt.

  7 minutes ago · Like
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  Major Asselin If you tell me Zardoz was a good movie, then i think we may have words.

  7 minutes ago · Like
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  Jared Place Connery is cool but he made some damn awful movies.
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• Later I posted this on his wall:
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Jared Place I stand corrected. F-ing Zardoz...

5 minutes ago · Like

Island Book Hunt & Pick Ups

     I had to be on Sanibel Island to help out with some merchandising and visit some stores on the island before noon. Using Android Navigation, I found that there was a Goodwill on the island in a little shopping plaza. I had to stop by. Quite possibly the smallest Goodwill ever. Maybe 600 sq. feet of floor space.

     This is the Sanibel Island book selection. The guy who was behind the counter followed me around and talked to me for most of my visit. I told him I have a blog and he said taking pictures was okay by him. I learned that a long time ago.. always ask before taking pictures. I only found one book here that was a fantasy or sci-fi book, so I felt obligated to buy that. One other book looked interesting....

 

     It's like they knew I was coming. Treating an alcoholic was right next to two beat up late printing Harry Potter books with water damage.

 

I had to go to a store back off the island, and there was a Goodwill book store in the same parking lot. My luck! I have talked about Goodwill Book Stores before and how they mark their prices up needlessly. If you click on the picture, you can see two clearance racks outside.. I shopped primarily from those and found a few books.

     Two little sections had fantasy and sci-fi, and they were all priced as marked. Some of the prices did not make sense, but, if the book looked new and in good shape, it was eight bucks or thereabout. Good thing I'm more interested in the old crappy books. I did see some interesting books that I may go back and get. A Fred Saberhagen book club edition was mixed in, and I wanted it, but had to stay within my daily budget of $10. I spent the most at this store, $5.85, and got the least amount of books. Sigh.

 

     I had to stop a little further down the road at a 711 and talk to a manager about some beer stuff, and within walking distance is a paperback exchange. I've been here before, she does not let me take pictures inside which sucks. I did not buy anything here as the selection is pretty slim. If you want some romance novels, this is your place! Floor to ceiling smutty barn romance here ladies.

 

 

     My last stop of the day was at the Book Rack, my favorite national chain paperback exchange. This place is crazy.. and tends to be expensive. Only open four days a week for about seven hours, so I had to get in-get out.

     Oh my god. I say it every time I walk in. My lord the inventory they have on hand makes Books-a-million cry and go to their room with no dinner. Sham on you any other book store that does not look like this. Literally seven feet tall, six or seven shelves total in the shape of a square with chairs in the middle. The lady here knows me, she organizes the books by series, alphabet and by awesomeness. I could spend all day in a place like this. The downside? Price. If the book looks nice, she puts $4.50 on it, period. If it looks old and shitty, .50 cents. If it is part of a series, its $2.50 which is pretty nice if your fleshing out you're Dragonlance books or something...

     ....and she has over 75 Dragonlance alone, and more in the back when it runs low. My budget dwindling and me having picked over all the best books, I only got to spend $3.00 here. There was a time about seven or eight years ago I would spend $80 a week in this store alone. I could do it now with all the books I'm missing, but again, I have this fictional budget of $10.00 per day, so I can buy something every day if I want to. Why the budget? Well $10 a day is around $300 a month, which is much more than many people spend on books. My budget is high and if I went over it, I would be straining to buy gas and food! Anyways, let's recap:

      Alright from top to bottom:

1) Rainbow Mars - Larry Niven
2) Starswarm - Brian Aldiss
3) Man from Tomorrow - Wilson Tucker
4) A Private Cosmos - Phillip Jose Farmer
5) The Ring of Ritornel - Charles L. Harness
6) The Eagle and the Sword - Harvey K. Schreiber
7)  A Small Armageddon - Mordeon Roshwald
8) Talon Silverhawk - Raymond Feist
9) Being a Green Mother - Piers Anthony
10) Star Trek Log Three - Phillip Jose Farmer
11) Star Trek Log Two - Phillip Jose Farmer

     Not a bad day. Picked up 11 books, 9 of which were new to my collection. Nothing very valuable, but some stuff I have not seen, or seen in a while. Tied to the constraints of my budget I could not go crazy at the Book Rack and their vast inventory. Maybe some eBay money will come in soon and I can put that back into the system and go nuts. My cat Artax helped me put the books away. Yes, Artax from the Neverending Story.



Kyle's Books are Pretty Nerdy

    
   A good friend of mine, Kyle, invited me over his house last night to comsume a few beers. Most people know when they invite me over, I typically bring the beer because i get it at a doscount.. or most times for free.

     We talked about growing vegetables and all sorts of boring things when the subject of course gravitated towards books. Kyle is the guy who bought the storage unit books with me, and most of the books he owns are first editions, so he has some good stuff. Just in the page above I see a first edition Dragonlance hard cover (I want that), some Dahl first editons which go for crazy expensive, and the list goes on.

  
    The next shelf over botgh amazes and delights most Gen-Xers with both a Delorean and a Powerglove. It's so bad. Looking down and you will see...

     About 1/10th of Kyle's NES collection, and some other random bullshit he has found at garage sales and goodwill.

     This shelf is right accross from his bad, or guest bedroom bed, or whatever. Tons of first edition paperbacks, some great Piers Anthony novels and SNES games to round off a good shelf. I could spend all day taking pictures of Kyle's bookcases, as he has many.. many more, but I'm trying to keep this a book blog after all. Speaking of book blogs, I'm going to be doing a big post later on with my travels today. Hit some good stores and some good areas today!

Tuesday Goodwill Pick Up.. on a Tuesday

    
     I had the fortune to work today with a close friend of mine that works at the same company, and we went down to Fort Myers beach to execute some displays for the upcoming World Sand Sculpture Competition. We had some time to burn before picking up someone for a lunch back at the office, so I suggested we hit the Goodwill off the beach.. of course.

     We saw absolutely nothing, as I had been here several times before in the past month, I was not optimistic. When I say not optimistic, I mean we were screwing around doing nothing, looking stupid. Right before we left I told him to meet me outside, as I was just going to check the books real fast, and they don't have many being that a Goodwill Bookstore is nearby. I saw the same things I saw there last week. The same smut-romance and Danielle Steele. And then..

     ...a first edition 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke. Very good condition, early printing. A quick search of eBay tells me it's work between $30 and $50. Score indeed. It was marked as two dollars for some reason which is high even by Goodwill standards. I was happy to pay it. I showed it to my friend waiting for me in the car with my eBay app open on my phone and he just shook his head.

    
     I have the habit of discounting stores I've been to recently. I think I'm going to re-think that mantra. What if I have been missing books and other people have been picking them up? I'm being paranoid I know, but this proves my theory, as I would have never over looked this little gem. Oh, and that is the pumpkin I carved for my son on Sunday, seemed fitting to stage a photo-op with it being Halloween and all.

Robert Asprin & Thieves' World

     Robert Asprin was introduced to me by way of Elf Quest. I read a Piers Anthony book as a youngster, and in said book, the two worlds crossed- Elfquest and Xanth. I had to have more Elfquest, wolf riding and so on. I went to Theives' World from there, and was introduced to authors like Poul Anderson and Marion Bradley. Sadly, Robert Asprin died in 2008, but the series lives on. Lynn Abbey who also contributed to Elf Quest and Myth Adventures has taken the reins and done well with it.

    
     Above is a selection of different books written by him that I just took a picture of. The early covers are the best in my opinion with great detail and an old look about them. First editions don't go for very much on eBay but are pretty collectible in the right circles. I have several Thieves' World hard covers, but honestly, I was too lazy to unearth them from under another pile of books I was trying to organize. I tried to get my friend Kyle to help me, but he was too busy drinking beer in my kitchen with a $200.00 first edition coaster under his beer.

Yes, that is a sock Coozy, as my wife was doing laundry and it was closer than the one in the drawer by the fridge. Under it is a Sword of Shannararararara first edition from an earlier post i did. Kyle, you are a man of many talents.

Blog Name Change Failed Title Pictures

     The name change was an easy one to make, I picked out more pleasing-to-the-eye fonts which now i can't remember what they are. I had Adobe Photoshop open and decided to try out some other blog titles and see how they look... (Click for larger image, or slideshow)

    
     This one was by far one of my favorite. Test audiences loved it, but people thought the blog was really some idiot who likes books. Wait, yeah okay i get it. now.

     Almost went with this one. Book whoring is to Game Chasing, as Macdonalds is to Burger King.