I took another box of books to Half Price Books, this time earning a whopping $6.50 for the 30-or-so books I cleared from my shelves. I've got at least another box of books that I'll be able to get something for and about that much in books that don't have covers and thus are worthless. At least, worthless in the sense that Half Price Books will give me nothing for them. They will, however, take them off my hands and pass them on to some other outlet which will, in turn, pass them on to people who might want to read them.

Reuse. Renew. Recycle.


 

Steampunk display at the Waterfront Barnes and Noble

They have the Vandermeer Steampunk anthology (have it already), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (have 3 copies), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (have 2 copies), Leviathan (that I'll be getting when it comes out in paperback) and Boneshaker (that I almost bought right then but, sorry B&N, I'll probably be ordering on Amazon next week).

I don't know about the steampunkiness of the other selections on the shelf, but if it were me setting up the display, I probably would have thrown in First Men in the Moon (just because Wells needs to be represented) and the Steamboy DVD.

The steampunk genre seems to be growing quite vigorously. Huzzah!

I took a box of thirty books to Half Price Books, clearing off one of my bookshelves to make room for more books. In collecting those thirty books, mostly paperbacks, I probably spent around $100.

I got back $5.

I bought a book with that.

I hope my thirty books find good homes.

*snif*

 

From the dealer's room of Millennicon I purchased two books. "Barnum!: In Secret Service to the USA" is a graphic novel that casts P.T. Barnum as a secret agent. I have no idea if it's any good asin I purchased it solely because it includes Nicola Tesla. I also picked up "Hollow Earth" which is less focused on the actual history of the theory that the Earth is hollow and more on the science fiction writing that used the theory.

 

Within only a few minutes of arriving at Millennicon, I dropped $50 for books.

"Girl Genuis Omnibus": I saw this last year but since I already had the graphic novels I put off picking it up. By the time I decided on Sunday to just go ahead and get it, someone else had taken the one copy. This year, there was no hesitation.

"League of Extraordinary Gentlemen": I loaned out my copy to someone and never got it back. It had to be replaced to occupy its place on my shelf.

"Star Strike" by Ian Douglas: It's the 7th book in the series and I hadn't realized it was out. And I known the author.

"Discarded Science: Ideas that seemed good at the time...": I opened it up randomly and found the chapter on the luminiferous aether. Cool.

"Corrupted Science: Fraud, ideology and politics in science": It was only $10.

Last night I attended Tim's 16th annual Passage Party and, as always, it was enjoyable and enlightening.

What is a Passage Party? The basic format is that guests read a 10 minute passage from a book, article, poem or other literary work. It is completely freeform although graphic violence, sex, political and religious propaganda are discouraged. No kids are permitted but children's books have been read from. There's about three hours of this, an hour to eat a pot-luck dinner, then another three hour of readings. Then, there is several hours of conversation and finishing up the food.

Many times, there are passages read that prompt me to go out and obtain said book to read the rest. Most of the selections I have chosen to read from have been humerus stories (to reference a Mark Twain passage on the subject that was read last night) though some have not been intended as such. Last night, there was time for me to get in two passages.

"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. Chapter 6: The Roots of Morality, wherein Dawkins describes a statistical study of Harvard biologist Marc Hauser. Participants were asked their response to a number of moral dilemmas and the results between religious people and atheists found no difference in response. The conclusion being that faith does not make us good or bad.

"Critical Mass: Bicycling's Defiant Celebration" by Chris Carlsson (Editor). The Great Bicycle Protest of 1896 describing the massive bicycle advocacy rally in San Francisco at the turn of the century and how that movement, in agitating for and creating better roads for bicycles actually lead to their marginalization once the automobile came along a took the streets.

In past years, I have also read:

"Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae" by Steven Pressfield

"Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766" by Fred Anderson

"A Walk in the Woods - Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail" by Bill Bryson

"War of the Worlds" by H.G.Wells

"Tarzan of the Apes" by Edgar Rice Burroughs

"Stephen Hawking Builds Robotic Exoskeleton" from The Onion

"The Zombie Survival Guide" by Max Brooks

"The Atlatl Hunt that got Weird or Blunt Trauma" by Bob Berg from "The Atlatl" 2002, Vol. 15, No. 2

"Calling Dante's Inferno" by Kevin Underhill

"Silver Pigs" by Lindsey Davis

"The Complete Time Traveler" by Howard J. Blumenthal, Dorthy F. Curley and Brad Williams

"Raptor Red" by Robert T. Bakker

"Tesla: Man out of Time" by Margaret Cheney

"The Call of Cthulhu" by H. P. Lovecraft

I admit that as soon as I got my hands on a copy of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", I turned immediately to the back and read the last chapter. But, since this was, in fact, the most of any Harry Potter novel I have read, I learned a few of the people who don't die but otherwise, it didn't mean anything to me.

*shrug*

I was in the Squirrel Hill Barnes & Noble bookstore and note that the graphic novel and manga sections are no longer in the back corner adjacent to the science fiction. It's much closer to the front now right next to the B&N Classics with the likes of Dickens and Dostoevsky and just behind hardcover new releases. Is this a sign of respectability for the graphic novel format? Are they now considered novels first and comic books second? More likely it's just where things ended up.

Still, it's nice to think that graphic novels might no longer be fringe fiction.