Not to be a shill for Amazon, but for those who like to save money on books, you can get a fourth book free after buying three books under ten dollars. They’ve got lots of paperback classics that fit the bill.
Four for Three
Calvin and Hobbes: the Motherlode
If you love Calvin and Hobbes – and I know you do – this treasure trove of Calvin and Hobbes classics (yes, that’s all of them) will seem like manna from heaven. If you feel bad that some Internet cowboy has posted all of Bill Waterson’s creations online, then you can assuage your guilt by preordering The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, arriving just in time for holidays 2005 and brought to you by Andrews-McNeel, whose The Complete Far Side was the big ticket book gift of holidays 2003.via waxy.Related: Calvin and Hobbes returns, but not the way we wish it would.
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The Rex Pickett story
Among the few movies I’ve seen in recent months, Sideways was one of the best. The director, Alexander Payne, has made a career out of bringing quirky, character driven novels to the screen. This time, the source material was a novel by the unknown and struggling Rex Pickett. According to this article from the Guardian, Rejected by 15 publishers, Sideways was still without a home when Payne happened to read the manuscript and liked it. Even with the possibility of a movie in the works, Pickett had to work hard to get it published. St Martin’s initial reluctance turned out to be quite lucrative:Then, finally, a publisher bit. “A lot of people think the book was only sold because it got made into a movie,” Pickett says. “That’s not true. It was bought when there was no guarantee it was going to be a movie. So that rankles me a little bit.” Apart from anything else, the film’s uncertain status meant that the book deal wasn’t worth much money up front. “St Martin’s Press paid me almost nothing. But that did mean my advance, what little it was, was earned out very quickly. Now I get a dollar for every copy sold!” He still sounds slightly giddy at the thought.I haven’t read this book, and I’ve heard that it’s just so-so, but I love the Rex Pickett rags to riches story.
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Options for Basement Booksellers
Last week, online used book retailer Alibris announced a new program called Alibris Basic targeting “small and moderate booksellers,” i.e. non-professionals. The program appears to differ from Alibris’ main offering in terms of pricing:You can list up to 1,000 items for sale, and you only pay $1 plus a small commission for each one that you sell. If you don’t sell anything, you don’t pay anything except the annual subscription charge of $19.99.This compares to the flat monthly fee (plus commissions) that larger scale booksellers are required to pay. For folks who have a lot of collectible books, the Alibris program is probably worth checking out, as the site specializes in this sort of inventory. As much as Alibris would like people to list all of their books for sale, however, there are better options for readers who are looking to unload their old non-collectible books.Amazon lets you very easily list your books for sale in just a couple of steps through their “Sell Your Stuff” page. Amazon charges 99 cents plus a 15% commission on the books you sell. The main upside of going with Amazon, as I see it, is that it probably has the widest reach of all the bookselling programs out there.Still, creating and managing listings for dozens of different books can be time consuming, and one must also deal with shipping off books that get sold to various individual buyers. If this sounds like a pain, then Barnes & Noble’s book buying program might be a better bet. You need only enter the book’s ISBN to get started. B&N will tell you if it’s buying that title and how much it’ll pay. After you’ve entered your books into the system, you print out an invoice and shipping label that allows you to send the books off to B&N for free. A few weeks later you get a check in the mail. I’ve tried B&N’s program, and I found it remarkably simple. You may not be getting the best price for your books, but it’s a lot easier than the other options. The main drawback I found is that B&N is somewhat limited in the books it is willing to buy. Textbooks are the best bet, and it’s a good way to try to unload any older ones you might have lying around.Beyond the above programs, there’s always eBay, which in the realm of non-collectible books is more trouble than it’s worth (though I have had luck putting up a few dozen books at once, charging $1 a piece to start, and cross-promoting across all my other listings as a “$1 book sale.”) And then there’s the local used book shop. Buying policies at these stores vary greatly, but some pay well – and often much better if you’re willing to get paid in store credit. Of course, these “trade in” policies are how many of us ended up with such big collections of books in the first place.Feel free to share any basement bookselling tips in the comments.
DFW Rides Again?
For those of us wondering whether David Foster Wallace will ever publish another novel, the February issue of Harper’s seems to augur something good. The magazine’s “Readings” section features an excerpt from a “work in progress” Wallace first read at last year’s Le Conversazioni festival (heretofore notable mainly for its photo-ops of writers in short pants.) The excerpt itself concerns an Illinois-based IRS auditor, and, though it’s not a radical semantic departure from the stories in Oblivion, DFW is always good on bureaucracies, and on Illinois. A crackerjack ending had me eager to read more.Video from the Le Conversazioni reading is available.
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Staying Sane: More reading notes
Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote has been on my reading list for a long time. Upon Max Magee’s suggestion I picked up the recent translation by Edith Grossman sometime in January 2004. It took me a good 11 months to work up the appetite, desire and guts to indulge in this phenomenal piece of writing. Described by many as the beginning of modern novel, Don Quixote relates a crazed Alonso Quixano’s sallies from his native La Mancha to various provinces of Spain. Beyond the usual adventures of the windmills, freeing of the slaves, and fair Dulcinea – all of which are a part of every child’s introduction to fairy tales and literature – lies the second part of the novel. Cervantes published two Don Quixote novels, and whereas the first one colors our imaginations as children, the Part II – published ten years after Part I, in 1615 – brings forth Cervantes as a witty author who employs Don Quixote’s insanity to illustrate the genius of his loyal servant Sanco Panza; the trivial entertainments of the Duke and the Duchess, whose cunning knowledge of the first novel, which is referred to numerous times in Part II, provide for the creative and chivalric plots that the nobles employ to ridicule Don Quixote; and a grand finale of sobriety that settles for once and all the history of Don Quixote. Cervantes ends the illustrious misadventures of Don Quixote to prevent new issues of fake Don Quixote novels from appearing. Cervantes’ answer to authors who attempted to profit on the first Don Quixote’s success, one Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda in particular, is derisive and rash – bordering on self flattery through his diatribe on other authors. Don Quixote opened a new window in my mind with its accessible language – thanks mostly to Grossman’s spectacular translation – and cunning use of word plays, romantic approach to the bygone days of knight errantry, mockery of social dogmas, integration of tangent plots – oh yes, you read at least 3 unrelated short stories in the novel – and eternally modern style. The novel’s mix of fantasy and reflections on society definitely place it in the pile of books the are must re-reads, albeit not in the short term – it will certainly take me a while to put aside another chunk of time for the second serving.I was distracted at times from reading Don Quixote by Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings. Matt Clare, a close friend and literary fiend, was kind enough to present me with this magnificent work that captures a unique time period in British society. Clare’s inscription on the cover reads “no Baron [on the Trees, by Italo Calvino, which I had presented to him earlier] to be sure, [but] the Lord may still have something to teach us.” Indeed, Lord Henry Wotton quickly became a new idol of mine, decadent and lost, with no particular interest in anything that the London high society of the 1880s held dear, nor any high aspirations that provided for the chatter at tea parties. The Jekyll and Hyde nature of The Picture of Dorian Gray presents vain struggles and trivial issues in an intentionally serious tone, which mocks the core of British culture at the time. There is much to be said about the twists and turns of The Picture of Dorian Gray, which keep the reader on his toes and makes the story an amazing, insightful and philosophical page turner. What follows in the 4 plays and final ballad also collected under the same volume (Lady Windermere’s Fan, Salome, An Ideal Husband, The Importance of Being Ernest, and The Ballad of Reading Gaol) is not as intense as the opener, but nevertheless very entertaining and universal. Oscar Wilde’s only drawback is the limited nature of his subjects, but he does a phenomenal job in conveying the stuck up nature of the crowd that he once was a part of.Related: Max’s thoughts on Don Quixote
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