Phew! After weeks of lost log-ins and passwords, I have cajoled, finessed, and begged my way back onto the blogosphere.
Our poetry display is tucked neatly away as we make way for Mother's Day.
It is gorgeous today with no sign of gray, so go out and play or come drink a latte.
I have just returned from a trip to the mainland where, with the help of my chain-smoking friend Ivan, I perused virtually every small bookstore in the I-5 corridor from Bellingham to Olympia.
I am still pretty new at this, but I am starting to sense that there is a real art to the whole
Trade-for-Bookstore-Credit thing. I brought two crates of books with me, one full of interesting titles and first editions, and one full of whodunnit's, DOS for Dummies and Seattle's Best Places to Kiss-kind of books.
At the Tacoma Book Center I took in the second-tier box of books and they gave me 12 dollars store credit for what they could sell. I was surprised to see the Window's for Dummies on the pile of stuff they wanted, while Harry Potter's sixth book, The Half-Blood Prince, lay in the discard pile. You never know who will be interested in what, I suppose.
I used my 12 dollar book credit to ask for the Trade paperback copies of In Watermelon Sugar and Rommel Drives On Deep Into Egypt, by Richard Brautigan, that they had behind the counter.
Ivan was searching for missing Patrick O'Briens from his collection, as well as obscure children's books and Edward Gorey. But I was on the lookout for Brautigan and Bradbury, and Philip K. Dick. Trying to find the originals of these authors is challenging, but these are names that tend to make bookstore folks' eyes light up, and I enjoyed hearing stories from the knowledgeable and, at times, eccentric bookstaff. The Tacoma Book Center, which is just off the Tacoma Dome exit off of I-5, has a large selection of books. The kind of place that gives Sci-Fi authors whole shelves. Del Rey, Dick, Dickson. Although, mostly you can only find the old Philip K. Dicks on special walls behind the shopkeeper, or wrapped in plastic inside glass cases.
Many of Philip K. Dick's books have been turned into movies (Blade Runner, Paycheck, Minority Report) but many of them are so psychedelic and inter-dimensional, or deal with time in such a challenging way that they can only be experienced in the book form... so far. The Philip K. Dick book I would most like to see turned into a movie is the Man in the High Castle, about what would happen if the Japanese and Germans won WWII... it is creepily real. He has a way of showing his characters that makes you think its really happening.
The best place to find these old paperbacks is probably at B. Brown's vintage books on Stone Way in Seattle. He has a large selection of these old P.K. Dick novels, as well as many first runs of Brautigan, Gorey, and good ol' Tom Robbins.
Well, I did pretty well cruising through different stores. I became very stream-lined in my searches, and was able to trade my way through the days, accumulating copies of Brautigan to make way for the upcoming Orcas Island Brautigan Library I am planning on hosting, either at Darvill's or at One-Way Exit Studio.
My favorite find might have been at Easton's, in Mt. Vernon, where I found the yellow hardback copy of June Burn's 'Living High' that has been out of print for a while. There is another, even older edition, in beautiful green cloth, that I almost bought as well, but it doesn't have the neat illustrations of the San Juan Islands or the pictures of her and her eccentric-looking housecar.
Now that I have spent a third of my paycheck on collectibles, though, I am glad to be back on the island, where I am looking forward to cozying up with some classics.
see you soon!
Alfred