In any case, this Hamilton chap and his business associates, whoever they are, have been selling remainders (and some new books) for at least twenty years, since I've been giving them business that long. The prices are good, and the joys of poking through a large catalog chock-full of books in various categories is pretty nice all by itself. And here's what I got this time:
A Horrible Experience of Unbearable Length
by Roger Ebert -- the third collection of his reviews of absolutely rotten movies, following I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie and Your Movie Sucks. Ebert is a good writer and a dependable writer-about movies who is at his most entertaining when he's being vituperative, so this should be fun.
and Bachelors Anonymous
. I did lose three shelves full of them back in the flood, but this is the one thing I've been seriously rebuilding since then, because Wodehouse, OK?
Nancy Likes Christmas
by Ernie Bushmiller -- I had a few of the random Kitchen Sink Nancy collections (pre-flood), but I might be jumping on the bandwagon of this newish Fantagraphics reprint series anyway: they look more impressive and bigger. And Bushmiller is just plain funny: he knew how to set up and put over a joke.
The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat
by R. Crumb -- I've never quite clicked with Crumb; I liked his recent Book of Genesis, but was snotty about Book of Mr. Natural and a little befuddled by both Sweeter Side and Odds & Ends. This is pretty much his defining work, and I've never read it, so I felt obliged to check it out.
X'ed Out
is the first book in Charles Burns's current series -- I read it a few years back, and currently have the sequel, The Hive, sitting on my to-be-read pile -- and now I have a copy of it again. I still need to get a new Black Hole, though.
And last is a story -- I gave my sons each a funny mass-market paperback in their stockings at Christmas this year. Thing 1 got The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- which I don't think he's read yet, though he was oddly talking about it to himself the other night -- and Thing 2 got The Colour of Magic. Number 2 Son told me that story last week, said he enjoyed it, and expressed mild ire that the story ended so abruptly. And so I've just gotten him not just The Light Fantastic
, but also Mort
and Equal Rites
, hoping to hook him hard. We'll see how that goes; he's already my fantasy fan, having read piles of Eoin Colfer, Susan Cooper, C.S. Lewis, and Brandon Mull over the past couple of years, among others.(And, again, I used to have every single Discworld book, and pretty much everything else by PTerry, in mostly nice and rare hardcovers, but the waters rose and I'm starting over.)
