Books you have recently bought

[Fortis]

Well we have a DVD's you have recently bought thread, and since I buy a lot of great books and want to show them off. I thought I would start up this thread.

So this thread is for the recent beautiful editions of books you have bought, that you aren't reading, so you can't put them in the What are you reading now thread.

I'll start off.

My recent collection was just added to because I needed more books to read, and my Lord of the Rings book set I had before was unreadable from too much use.

So after much research and continued searching for good deals, I broke down and bought this set of Lord of the rings books...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After ordering them off of Amazon (best price), I got them in the mail...and they were more beautiful than I could have imagined. <geek> So suddenly I found myself in need of another Lord of the Rings set, preferrably an Omnibus edition because the ones I bought were too beautiful for use. </geek>

After buying that set on Amazon, amazon decided to milk my nerdiness and give me deals on lots of awesome lord of the rings stuff. So I bought this...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I have never owned my own copy of The Hobbit, this is the 70th anniversary edition of it that I got for cheap on Amazon. I guess the cover is based off of the original European First Edition of The Hobbit with two exceptions. The Dragon on the back, and the sun on the front are colored red (like Tolkien originally wanted, but paper and ink shortages made it so it couldn't be that way). So yeah, both my Lord of the Rings set, and this Hobbit book all have original paintings by Alan Lee at certain points in the text.

The last book I recently bought also came from this orgy of cheap Lord of the Rings books I was in need of. I have The Silmarillion, it is a very early American edition of the book (not worth anything), that I got from a used book store. It is extremely cool, but I found one even cooler for sale thanks to Amazon...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I was pleasantly suprised when I got this, because it looks exactly like my Lord of the Rings set, so it goes nicely right next to it on my book shelf. I was a little reluctant buying this because it was illustrated by Ted Nasmith and not by Alan Lee. I had never heard of him, and I was skeptical on what he could do. Man, his paintings are amazing, and in my opinion better than Alan Lee's. There are also a lot more within the text of the Silmarillion, compared to the amount in my hobbit and lord of the rings books. The paintings actually make it easier to read because...well Tolkien made the Silmarillion a hard read, and the paintings help you picture things visually, and keep the pace going.

So yeah, I've bought actually a bunch more books lately, but I feel this post has gone on for far too long.

[mrbasehart]

After seeing The Red Badge of Courage today, I bought a book called Picture, by Lillian Ross.  It's about the making of the film (made in 1951), where she reports the divisiveness between the director, John Huston, and the studio heads.  It's widely considered to be one of the best pieces of journalism ever, was voted one of the century's top 100 journalistic works and called by Hemingway "much better than most novels".



I'm looking forward to reading it. 

[basselope]

Pardon the epic reply, but this is a story I've never told to anyone but my wife.

Earth, Sea and Sky by Henry David Northrop, printed in 1887, the only printing I'm aware of.
http://www.archive.org/details/earthseaskyormar00nortrich

It may sound silly at first, but I've been wanting this one since I was about ten years old. When I was a little stinker My mother would take me to my Great Grandmother's house the next state over about once a year. Her home was rather Spartan and very Great Grandmotherly (read: not much for a little stinker to do.) I don't know how it started, but every time we would visit her I would make a beeline for one of her books. It had pictures of animals, stars, deep sea life, and even Dragons and Dinosaurs. And there was something intangible about that book that just drew me in. It felt ancient and a little bit mysterious with it's guilt leather binding, filigree lettering here and there and the black and white ink illustrations. I loved that book.

My Great Grandmother passed on when I was, oh, I guess around 6 years old. When we went to her house to gather her things, my Mother handed me the book and told me Gran'ma wanted me to have it. I don't know whether or not they had ever actually discussed the book and, frankly, it doesn't matter. Nothing on this earth could have touched me more than that.

As I grew and could read better I began to notice something odd about that book. It had always been a mystery and I was determined that I would be able to read it one day, but things just didn't seem right. Eventually I figured out that the copy I had was a salesman's copy. The binding was split into samples of the four different options, the text was only partial and skipped around quite a bit, and even then it was printed in four lettering styles and three languages. To say I was disappointed would be a gross understatement.

Jump forward to a few weeks ago. After years of off-and-on searching, I found a copy in reasonable condition on an auction site. I was sweating bullets waiting for the auction to end, scared to death someone would out bid me. Turns out there's not a big demand for this particular tome... go figure! I was the only bidder. Once I got it in my grubby little hands I was elated. It was at least twice as thick as my sales copy and, except for the cover, it was in beautiful condition.

I won't torture you any more, except to say that this book still has it's mysteries. One pitiful paragraph in the middle of the book says this:

In this description of the sea-serpent we think it possible to recognize
another fantastic animal, the " great white whale " of the Greenland coasts,
hunted for two centuries by the Scotch whalers, which they called "maby
dick," and regarded as the terror of the Arctic Seas. According to these
mariners it makes its appearance now at intervals ; but is of so venerable
an age that its body is completely covered by vegetation and marine
mosses, in whose midst live attached to it, as to a rock, multitudes of
shell-fish and polypi.

Now, understand that Herman Melville first published his story in 1851, 36 years before this one, but it was a flop and didn't become popular until, if I remember correctly, well into the 1900's. Mr. Northrop could certainly have read the story or at least heard about it, but he was considered a very respectable historian and not given to exaggeration, even today.  That mention of Maby Dick is driving me crazy. I haven't found  single mention of it anywhere else. If you have any light you can shed on this, please for the love of God throw me a bone. I promised myself I would conquer this book all those years ago and I still haven't managed it!
 

Thanks for your patience... it was rather cathartic for me. 

[mrbasehart]

That's a nice story, Bass.  All I think of about the "maby dick" reference is that it's a corruption of the original Moby Dick.  Maybe Northrop just stole the name?

[Fortis]

That is a pretty awesome story, very cool you got ahold of a copy of that. Very cool

[basselope]

That's a nice story, Bass.  All I think of about the "maby dick" reference is that it's a corruption of the original Moby Dick.  Maybe Northrop just stole the name?

Well I'll be... I've searched for hints on where Melville got the name, but I've never seen this before:
http://www.melville.org/mobyname.htm

The name of Melville's most famous creation was suggested by an article by Jeremiah Reynolds, published in the New York Knickerbocker Magazine in May 1839. Mocha Dick: or The White Whale of the Pacific recounted the capture of a giant white sperm whale that had become infamous among whalers for its violent attacks on ships and their crews. The meaning of the name itself is quite simple: the whale was often sighted in the vicinity of the island of Mocha, and "Dick" was merely a generic name like "Jack" or "Tom" -- names of other deadly whales cited by Melville in Chapter 45 of Moby-Dick::

Thanks mrbasehart! You prompted me to try again and now I have a trail to follow. My childhood is nearly complete! 

And thank you both for your kind words. I felt kind of silly when I was posting.

[Fortis]

Well, because my set of Lord of the Rings books were just too beautiful to read...I got this today in the mail...



Its an omnibus edition, which makes me happy its just one book as Lord of the Rings should have been. My previous edition of Lord of the Rings that has worn out reset the page numbers every book, so when Tolkien noted on some pages to see page 1011 in the Appendices section for information on...oh say elvish meal habits would make me confused. Because my stupid Return of the King book would be page 200 instead of 1011. So yeah, I'm glad.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

NECROSCOPE

Saw it in a used bookstore on a holiday in Britain, pondered, didn't buy it. Saw it again in borders, had a gift card, did buy it. The concept sounds interesting.

[BathTub]

Y the Last Man, Volume 3

and

BPRD Volume 3

[SmilinJackRoss]

I Am legend.

I (unfortunately) heard how the book ends...but I guess that's what compelled me to start reading it.

[MrTorso]

Didn't know it was out and saw it in the bookstore:



New Chuck Palahniuk. I will start reading it tonight.

[anais.jude]

uh
I hate Chuck Palahnuik

[MrTorso]

uh
I hate Chuck Palahnuik

Sweet! You get to save $18!   

[anais.jude]

why thank you! 

[torgosPizza]

Picked up two books this weekend.

and