Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Private Peat





Photos, for a change, from a 1917 war memoir by a Canadian private. Here's the opening few paragraphs for you:

"Well," said old Bill, "I know what war is...I've been through it with the Boers, and here's one chicken they'll not catch to go through this one."

Ken Mitchel stirred his cup of tea thoughtfully. "If I was old enough, boys," said he, "I'd go. Look at young Gordon McLellan; he's only seventeen and he's enlisted."

That got me. It was then that I made up my mind I was going whether it lasted three months, as they said it would, or five years, as I thought it would, knowing a little bit of the geography and history of the country we were up against.

Friday, September 14, 2007

The Valley of Silent Men




A thriller from 1920 by James Oliver Curwood, illustrated by Dean Cornwall. It's got something to do with Canadian Mounties, I think.

On the fascination of old books

While I'm in between scanning sessions, here's a post I wrote on my other blog, Atlanta Rofters, a couple of years ago:

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Canadian tory pundit David Warren:

A civilization requires the lively circulation of old books. It is all very well to put their contents on the Internet -- you need the physical object to curl up with, and as a proof that the past really happened. You need the element of chance and discovery, in rooting through the remains of previous generations. Only a library or a used book store or sale can provide this, in the round -- for each contains, in addition to what is currently thought worth reading, a selection of what was once thought so. A computer screen is too small a window, and must be searched along a linear path, which no matter how it zigs and zags, remains a single line of inquiry.

Moreover, to my mind, a book is to a PDF file as sex to pornography. The book is something to hold, not just something to look at. I cannot see an excerpt from an attractive book on some backlit computer projection, without longing for the real thing.

Quite. In real life I get to rummage through a lot of old books, oftentimes entire estate consignments. They are the proverbial source of endless fascination for me, on many levels. One is of course the books themselves, and the interest they hold. The other is what a book collection tells about its former owner.

A retired minister's collection can be quite sizeable. It can contain books written by once-prominent pop-theologians, Biblical handbooks and reference materials, issues of a parish quarterly or some such, old Guidepost magazines, some lovingly-inscribed gift books from Christmases past. It's interesting getting a feel for his education and personality from the titles in the lot.

Or someone else might have belonged to a science fiction book of the month club years ago. Hardback editions of SF authors that only appear in paperback nowadays, if at all. (You know, if you say "new wave" to some people, they think not of music in the 80s, but science fiction in the 60s.) Old Universe compilations by Terry Carr. Any number of authors that I read when I was an spacey adolescent, but haven't thought about since then. And the literary memories flood back.

Of course a lot of book collections are quite prosaic. Computer professionals get rid of manuals that are scarcely five years old, depending on the software (or if they've moved on.) Nobody needs a 1970 set of World Book encyclopedias, or a 1960 hydraulics textbook. But a lot of vintage home economics handbooks can be quite entertaining reading.

And then there are the heirlooms, books given away by people unaware of their value. There are online tools for determining a book's monetary value, although I never take these books for myself. Borrow 'em for a day or two, maybe. When I find a century or more old book, with a personal name handsomely inscribed, sometimes I use other tools, out of idle curiosity, to find out more about that person. Only a bibliophile could understand the feeling I mean to describe, holding a book that was a Christmas or birthday present in the nineteen-oughts, and seeing the former owner's birth and death dates in a genealogy file.

I once had the opportunity to surprise a man with a box of books, whose existence he knew nothing of, that had once belonged to his late father, and some earlier ancestors. I bent some rules to do so, and drew a verbal reprimand, but darn it, I'm proud of myself for doing that. He had recently lost his other parent, so this reconnection with his past, and the chance to pass it on to his own children, was doubly poignant. Not bad for a load of old books.

Friday, September 7, 2007

Scooped!

I launched this blog, featuring all these rare (SFAIK) illustrations, in hopes of landing Blogger's front page feature. But, much to my chagrin, I see that they very recently spotlit this blog, which covers the same ground. The fellow running it knows a lot more about illustration than I do, plus there's a lot more sex than I'll be having over here to boot. So, if your tastes run that way, click on over and scroll.

...darn it...

Ellery Queen



This is the 1940 edition of a 1934 copyrighted novel

Even more WWII paperbacks,


More WWII paperbacks


Sunday, September 2, 2007

Wartime paperbacks



Here we have a pocket paperback of John Steinbeck's The Moon Is Down, from 1942...




...and this from 1941, purporting to be the diary of a Luftwaffe pilot. The cover artist is Gerald Gregg, who drew a lot of Dell paperback covers in the Forties. I may have to sit down with this one, before I send it along. Have to be careful, though. In addition to being 60 years old, it's a disposable wartime book, printed on materials even cheaper than normal paperbacks. It's a miracle that these are in as good a shape as they are.