New Used Books!

Literary starfish wants a look.

I visited my folks this past weekend in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Having grown up there, I’ve developed a couple of rituals I like to do whenever I return for nostalgia’s sake.  Visiting the Matthei Botanical Gardens. Stopping by the Natural History Museum where I used to work, and spending some quality time enjoying the Life Through the Ages room . Collecting a couple scientific articles from the University Science Library. 

And of course, I have to stop by the Dawn Treader Book Shop on Liberty Street. Dawn Treader is what you think of when you picture a classic used book store. Floor-to-ceiling shelves of sturdy wooden boards stacked close together so you almost have to squeeze through sideways, and overflowing with paperbacks, textbooks, big art books, old magazines. Books even run along the floor at the base of the shelves like speleotherms coagulated from letters dripping off the stacks.

And of course the place is full of artifacts. Masks. Paintings. Glass cases holding delicate leather-bound first editions over a hundred years old.  There’s even a full-size plaster Egyptian sarcophagus (I really should ask what the story is behind that). The front desk has a little jar labeled “take a marble, leave a marble”. You can probably guess what it’s filled with.

I’ve been getting books from Dawn Treader ever since middle school. And will keep going back as long as they’re in existence.  

So here’s what I picked up this time.

Gentlemen Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-Up Generation

by Harlan Ellison

Despite being a fan of science fiction and fantasy, I haven’t read most of the authors I’m “supposed” to read. Never read any Heinlein. Nor Asimov or Card. Never even touched A Song of Ice and Fire or its sequels. Never cracked open Dune. Only read a bit of Arthur C. Clarke and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Heck, I don’t even think I’ve read all of the Lord of the Rings.

 At least I’ve read Lovecraft, LeGuin and some Poul Anderson. And one or two Larry Niven novels. Plus a bunch of Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock. But honestly, it’s exhausting trying to keep up on the speculative fiction culture.

So, anyway, I feel I should try to familiarize myself with at least a few of the famous authors. I’ve read a little Harlan Ellison before, and I like his style. Plus, I gotta be honest, I was amused by the fact that Ellison appeared as himself in this new Scooby Doo series my son has been watching lately (Mysteries Incorporated, in case you were curious).

The inside blurb says, rather breathlessly, “This is it! This is the book that established Harlan Ellison once and for all as a master of short fiction; this is the book that took Ellison to Hollywood; and this is the only paperback book, ever, reviewed by the legendary Dorothy Parker in Esquire magazine.” 

Sp apparently I picked out a good book to start with.

Un Lun Dun 

by China Miéville. 

I became a fan of Mieville after reading the first two books of his Bas-Lag series, Perdido Street Station and The Scar.  His stuff is frequently fantasy, but veering more towards the capital W Weird of 1930s pulp like Lovecraft, William Hope Hodgson and Clark Ashton Smith. I’ve read that he’s trying to write a book in every genre, and it seems like Un Lun Dun is his Neil Gaiman/Phillip Pullman-style Young Adult Adventure fantasy.

Star Rider 

by Doris Piserchia

Outside of the Dawn Treader are a couple of racks of “last chance” books for 50 cents. I’ve been trying to get back into the lifestyle of a reader/writer, voyaging through as many imagined worlds as I can. So I figured I’d pick up a couple “wild card” books out there. Maybe I’ll find a gem in one of these.

The back of Star Rider reads: “They called her Galactic Jade, a footloose, star-flung loner who roved space on her telepathic mount Hinx, ever searching for the fabled city of Doubleluck with its waterfalls of diamonds, lakes of sweet perfume and streets of flowing gold. But she held a secret the whole universe wanted, a secret that sent her on a galactic odyssey of self discovery to escape the prisons of her own mind.”

Groovy.

The Shadow of the Ship

by Robert Wilfred Franson

 Sounds like it’s about a man, Eiverdein, looking for a lost ship to help him return to known space. I mostly picked it up because the cover looks like a mid-80s Tangerine Dream LP record. I can practically hear this thing pumping out “Love On A Real Train”.

 I’ll give you more details once I have a chance to read it.