Will secrets be revealed?

Happy Halloween, bookies!

Those who have followed this blog for any length of time know that your friendly neighborhood bookseller is something of a World War II buff. Aside from working daily on his own book on a fairly obscure part of this war he reads, eats, watches and absorbs through osmosis just about anything presented about the war. And before you ask, he doesn't know why. This is how it has always been.

Anyway, there is a new book coming that has him truly excited. Fritz Darges was one of Adolf Hitler's SS adjutants during the war. Oddly, he was not a member of 1st SS Division Adolf Hitler, the unit specifically tasked with protecting him, but instead was a member of 5th SS Division Viking, the pan-European unit that included not only Germans but French, Dutch, Norwegians, you name it. Darges died recently and his family is honoring his wishes that his memoirs be published after his death. Historians are champing at the bit to read them, me included, for a variety of reasons. Mostly, though, they are hoping that Darges will provide eye witness testimony that Hitler was directing the implementation of the Holocaust. To date nothing has surfaced that ties him directly to the Holocaust leaving apologists to blame everything on Himmler.

I'm interested in the inner workings of the German High Command, as well as the battlefield accounts of a man serving with perhaps the most idealistic of all the Waffen SS formations. Doesn't that sound like fun?

What secrets are in Fritz Darges' memoirs?

OCTOPUSSY by Ian Fleming

Octopussy The Last 2 by Ian Fleming. New American Library, 1966. First printing indicated by statement on the copyright page, as seen in the photo. This collection also contains the story 'The Living Daylights.'

Given the success of James Bond by the time of this publication in 1966, you would have thought NAL would do a better job with the book. The format is octavo, boards are black paper with no cloth backstrap. Silver stylized rifle is embossed onto the front cover. Paper is fairly heavy stock. Cover price is $3.50. The Jacket itself has a photo of Fleming on the back smoking a cigarette in a holder, but is fairly flimsy and easily wrinkled and torn at the edges.

That might be a little bit excessive

Good morning bookies!

Okay, so a lot of you have been asking me The Big Question: 'BBG, why aren't you hand-selling your books at primary schools in China?'

I admit, it's a good question. And until now I never had a good answer. Aside from not speaking any Chinese, and my stock all being written in English, and a few dozen other lesser reasons, I really had no excuse. There was just this underlying feeling that it was a bad idea. Only today did I discover why.

It seems that the Chinese don't like booksellers. Or, at the very least, they are suspicious of them. Nor can I really blame them for this. I know a lot of booksellers and I find most of them quite suspicious. However, I did not realize they hated them bad enough to kill them, which I am glad to discover before I did finally take this little business overseas.

Whew! That was a close call.

Chinese display how they really feel about booksellers

FAREWELL TO SPANDAU

Good morning bookies!

A short blog today to introduce a new book by Tony Le Tissier, author of Slaughter at Halbe, the account of the destruction of the 9th German Army during the final battle for Berlin in 1945. Farewell to Spandau is the author's account of Spandau Prison in Berlin and its last, most famous inmate, Rudolf Hess. It seems Le Tissier was the final British commander of this unique institution, a prison run by the 4 powers that destroyed Nazi Germany, the US, UK, France and the USSR, and only closed after Hess committed suicide. At its high point the facility only held 7 prisoners, so the effort and expense put forth to incarcerate one very old man, but one unrepentant Nazi, seems out of all proportion. As a symbol, however, of the united stance against fanaticism, it was money well spent.

Farewell to Spandau by Tony Le Tissier

Color me skeptical

Hiya bookies!

As all of you who have read my biography know, and I assume that's all of you, I was, am and always will be a fan of Douglas Adams. Whether it's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Starship Titanic or Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Adams skewed view of the world was just plain funny. And in the one letter he wrote me (but not out of the blue. I wrote him first) he was also pithy. He couldn't help it.

But there were 5 books in the Hitchhiker's Trilogy, every word put down by Adams. Was there really need of a 6th not written by him?

I get that Starship Titanic was mostly written by Terry Jones, but Adams himself was there to oversee the project and give notes. To have an entirely new entry in the HG2G canon penned by someone else...well, color me skeptical. And yet today's book review indicates the author, Eoin Colfer of Artemis Fowl fame, has pulled it off brilliantly.

Maybe. Hopefully.

I'll let you read the review and decide if you want to read the book. I'm leaning towards it being irresistible.

And Another Thing

THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG by Edward Abbey

Note to Bookies: Frequent readers of this blog will note that I'm not a photographer. The photos of this book didn't come out as white as the cover really is, it's quite bright. Unless it's dirty, of course, which this one is not.



The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey. Lippincott, 1975. First edition is identified by First Edition slug on the copyright page. Construction is red quarter cloth and black paper boards. Jacket price is at the bottom of the front inner fold, $8.95.

Abbey only wrote 8 novels and The Monkey Wrench Gang is his best known, often cited as a masterpiece of crime comedy. He outlived publication of this book by a mere 14 years.

I am often asked where I find my books. This particular book came from Somerville, TN., a small town about 25 miles east of the Memphis border. You never know, do you?

KILLING FLOOR by Lee Child

Killing Floor by Lee Child. Putnam, 1997. The first in Child's uber-popular ex-military cop Jack Reacher was a typical offering of the late 90's. Construction was quarter cloth and paper boards, with the front board embossed from the top edge with the narrow chevron pictured on the title page. Not particularly well built, pristine copies are hard to come by these days and command a premium.

There was a time when remaindered copies of Killing Floor were to be found quite easily, and second hand copies were cheap. That went on until about the mid 2000's, circa 2005, when prices began to climb. Child is fun in person and free with his signature, nevertheless, signed copies of Killing Floor command a great premium.

Comics come of age

Good morning bookies!

Your friendly neighborhood bookseller is a fan of The University of Memphis Tigers. This would usually have no bearing on a blog devoted to books, however, it's relevant because today's blog praises the University Press of Mississippi, the publishing arm of The University of Mississippi at Oxford. Ole Miss.

Memphis Tiger fans don't like Ole Miss. Thus, my conflict.

And yet one has to give credit where it's due. Memphis State University once had a flourishing press and if Mississippi still does, and if it makes a valuable contribution to the study of comics, a field that yours truly once found obsessive, well, I have to give them a shout-out.

So today's link takes you to a nice article about UPM's contribution to the study of comics, a scholarly study. And yes, comics deserve a scholarly study or three. As one who grew up having his reading habits questioned by authority figures, and who is still traumatized by his history teacher confiscating the X-Men issue he was reading during class, I recognize just how important comics can be in developing the reading skills of the young person.

Comics in the classroom, on purpose

The books that never were, or will be

Good morning bookies!

As you all know this blog is all about books. A boy, his books and a bunch of words. However, today's blogette is about books that may never be written, because the author has been arrested. And what is the crime of this evil-doer? Trying to find out what happened to German prisoners of war during the Stalin Era in the USSR.

See, those in power in Russia don't think Stalin was such a bad guy. Sure, a few tens of millions of Soviet citizens were killed on his orders during his reign, but so what? Just a necessity, right? Those are the numbers generally put out but coming up with an accurate count is hard, the USSR wasn't exactly what you would call an open society.

So today we live in an era we can call Stalin's Rehabilitation, when Vlad Putin and his buddies want to present Stalin as more misunderstood than anything else. And along comes a researcher writing a book about the fate of Wehrmacht POWs and bingo! He's arrested. For what? Does it matter? His apartment is cleaned out, his research materials confiscated. And now those two books he was going to write that would, no doubt, have added tremendously to our understanding of WW2 in Russia, may never get written.

The new Russia sure looks an awful lot like the old Russia.

R.I.P. Stuart Kaminsky

Sadly, crime writer Stuart Kaminsky has died. I hate it when authors I like and have met pass away, even moreso than the sadness I feel at every author's death. Kaminsky was immensely popular with his core fans and deserved to be much better known than he was. I met him at EyeCon in St. Louis in 1999, thanks to Robert J. Randisi, who worked like a dog to pull off the best convention of any sort I have ever attended.

Stuart Kaminsky

DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS by Walter Mosley

Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley. Norton, 1990 Octavo hardback. Mustard quarter cloth, cinnamon paper boards. The novel that introduced Easy Rawlins to the world of crime fiction is surprisingly well constructed, with a striking art deco inspired cover. Paper is of much higher quality than typical for first authors, probably representative of the pre-publication praise and type. One would have thought that Mosley would open the door for a new world of African-American crime writers, and in a way he did, but none have had near his level of success, despite some being arguably better writers.

Your friendly neighborhood bookseller attended Mosley's signing here in Memphis a few years ago. Unlike most signings, the majority of the audience was black, and I was thrilled by this. It was great to see such a turnout to support one of that community's better writers. When one of the audience asked Mosley what other African-American mystery writers he would recommend, Mosley asked the audience who they would recommend before he answered. Nobody said anything for a while, so I did. Wow, did I get some dirty looks, as though I wasn't supposed to read black authors. I recommended Gar Anthony Haywood and Robert Greer as my two favorites. Mosley then nodded and agreed those were the two best out there. He was a very nice man, if you ever get a chance to see him in person, take it.

Gluecksfall

Good morning bookies!

Today's new word of the day titles this blog: gluecksfall. To be accurate, there should be an umlaut over the 'u' and no 'e' at all, but that's what happens when you write German with an English keyboard. The word means 'stroke of good luck', and that's what happened to Germany when an aging GI decided to return two books that he took as souvenirs during World War II.

As a bookie myself the part of this story that stuck out most was when the gentleman described walking into an underground salt mine filled floor to ceiling with antique books. Sure, they're in German. So what? That's what online translators are for.

Aging GI returns souvenir books to the Germans

e-pirates. Ahoy, me buckos!

Good morning bookies!

As most of you know, your friendly neighborhood bookseller hates e-books. He doesn't dislike them, he wishes they would burn in hell, their pages curling into ash beneath the fires of perdition. Except, of course, that an e-book doesn't actually exist or have pages or anything. You aren't actually buying a tangible item when you buy an e-book, you see, you are buying a lot of words that are stored electronically on a device that has a finite lifespan. And once you've read what you have bought? Try re-selling it, or lending it to a friend. Good luck with that. And I can't wait to see how an author is going to sign one.

Well, now this scam has new problems, the same ones the music industry has dealt with: piracy. People stealing e-books on file sharing sites. Who knew? But just like the local Memphis book thieves used to steal choice volumes from my store (and yes, I know who you are) they are now stealing e-books. The biggest difference is probably that with e-books they have to steal some batteries to go along with them.

Blackbeard's ghost on work among e-books

More trees that died in vain

Good morning bookies!

You may have noticed that the last few blogs have been shorter than usual, and that's my new trend. Bullet blogs, I'll call them, and hopefully it will mean that I keep this updated the way it should be, on a daily or near-daily basis.

Dan Brown's latest monstrosity is selling as well as you would expect, and today's link is about the positive effect it is having on other titles. I'm glad about this, I really am. If The Symbol is taken alone and without the ripple effect it has on the entire industry, then one can only weep for the trees that died so that it might be printed in its millions of copies. I have not, of course, read it. After reading The Da Vinci Code there is no need. When one writes the second worst book I have ever read it isn't required that I read new stuff to see if the author plumbs new depths of ineptitude.

If you have read this latest, however, and liked it, then make no mistake: I am glad. I have no problem with those who like his work, just as I have no problem with people who like reading almost anything. Reading is reading and there is value in even the most worthless piece of trash.

Dan Brown actually has a positive influence on the purchase of good books

Dean R. Koontz HELL'S GATE

Hell's Gate by Dean R. Koontz, Lancer Books, 1970. Paperback original. Koontz's 7th book was typical of Lancer publications of the time, printed on cheap, high-acid paper, the cover held on by cheap glue that easily lets go. It is quite common to find Lancer volumes with the cover loose and the paper very browned. Note the small torn spot at the top of the spine: you find this a lot with Lancer's of this era. Which is why, with a now-popular author like Koontz, these early editions tend to be pricey and with a premium on condition. They just weren't built to last.

Terry Pratchett's MONSTROUS REGIMENT

Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett. Doubleday, 2003. The Australian First Edition is published by Doubleday, full black cloth boards, very well constructed with a sturdy paper stock. The signature is 2006, just before the news of his early-onset Alzheimer's was leaked. He looked exhausted, but then, the following story should illustrate why.

The story behind this is that he appeared at MidSouthCon, I waited 2 1/2 hours in line, only to be told that he was due at a panel and could not sign again until that night. So we were given stubs and had to drive all the way back to the hotel, for me about a 45 mile round trip. But I did, and got the autograph.

What makes this rare is twofold: it's a UK edition in the USA, and it's signed. Given the obvious demand for his ultra-popular stuff, signed Pratchett material will only continue to escalate in value.

Back to bashing

Good morning bookies! A quick blog to let you know that I haven't forgotten my minions in all of the doings about Billthebookguydom. Today's news byte is a new look at an old enemy, ebay. Yep, as with all bad things, the greedy giant is still getting bashed and is still sinking into the sunset, even if it's slower than some thought. Here's a nice little article from The Street that many of you will identify with immediately. It's clear the author gets it.

Greedbay ebay still adrift in dangerous waters

Return of the scanner people

Hiya bookies. Long time no talk. Sorry. It may seem that I have given up on this blog. Not so. Not even close.

My mom fell and broke her hip last month. Aged 91, she's doing better than you might expect but this has really cut into the time for such things as blogging. Then, somehow, I've hurt my shoulder, and the one thing that hurts worse than anything else is sitting at the computer typing. Get the correlation? Sitting, typing, blogging?

And no, I'm not good at typing standing up.

Don't be a smart aleck. But I did get a laugh yesterday at the Collierville Friends of the Library sale. The Scanner People were out in force.

You remember the scanner people, right? Those who use the little hand held devices that looks at the book's ISBN and tell them whether it has resale value or not? They might be selling beach balls or frozen rabbit or lawn furniture for all they know, and care, about books. All they do is what their silly little machine tells them.

Well, as usual one of the doofi (plural of doofus) scanned a book that their little machine said wasn't valuable. And it wasn't. Unless it was signed. Which that one was. Which I noticed because I looked. Probably worth more than every book their expensive little device found for them.

Gotta love the Scanner People. They will tell you that the cost of their little device and the monthly fees for their service are more than worth it, that it pays off because they don't spend money on books that aren't valuable. Of course, I try not to, either, but the device I use doesn't cost me anything. It also registers more factors than just a bar code to determine value. And if the book should happen not to have a bar code? Then I think smoke comes from the ears of the Scanner People and their circuit breakers shut, leaving them to walk around in endless circles.

So be nice to the Scanner People, when you see them. Just don't let them inside your house. Like Zombies, they're scary.