http://www.tomwolfe.com/images/covers/ManinFull.jpg
― Suzy Creemcheese (SuzyCreemcheese), Tuesday, 21 June 2005 19:47 (eighteen years ago) link
― Beth Parker, Monday, 15 August 2005 19:42 (eighteen years ago) link
― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Monday, 15 August 2005 20:37 (eighteen years ago) link
― jed_ (jed), Monday, 15 August 2005 21:39 (eighteen years ago) link
His other ones even more so, I think because they're worse so people just want to get rid of them out of their houses. Plus we had three copies in one week of a book that's being described in its blurb as the thinking person's DVC. One man brought it into the shop, put it on the counter and said "you can have this, it's RUBBISH!"
And good god, you could drown in Robert Jordans.
― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Tuesday, 16 August 2005 06:46 (eighteen years ago) link
― Øystein (Øystein), Tuesday, 16 August 2005 07:29 (eighteen years ago) link
― vahid (vahid), Tuesday, 16 August 2005 08:22 (eighteen years ago) link
― Aimless (Aimless), Tuesday, 16 August 2005 14:56 (eighteen years ago) link
― Beth Parker, Friday, 26 August 2005 13:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― David Aldridge, Friday, 7 October 2005 01:48 (eighteen years ago) link
― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Saturday, 8 October 2005 00:15 (eighteen years ago) link
― k/l (Ken L), Saturday, 8 October 2005 00:24 (eighteen years ago) link
― sp@m, Tuesday, 6 June 2006 00:42 (seventeen years ago) link
― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, 7 June 2006 17:46 (seventeen years ago) link
Less so nowadays, but hardbacks of The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade used to haunt every second-hand shop I'd go into, especially the 25p random table. Also, The Romany Rye and/or Lavengro by George Borrow.In poetry sections, creaky editions of Sir Walter Scott's poems. Some form of Dennis Wheatley, usu The Devil Rides Out, often a red hardback (see also: editions of Wheatley as ornamental books-by-the-yard in pubs).
― woofwoofwoof, Wednesday, 13 May 2009 15:03 (fourteen years ago) link
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/ce/cd/2fd5b2c008a039b0672ca010.L._AA240_.jpg
― Old Big 'OOS (AKA the Cupwinner) (darraghmac), Wednesday, 13 May 2009 15:06 (fourteen years ago) link
Lavrengo! I picked this up recently from a second-hand bookshop but aborted reading after about a page. No particular reason. I just couldn't be arsed, and it clearly wasn't going to be another The Bible in Spain.
Macaulay's History of England, usually in some uninvitingly cumbersome format.
― The Fairy Josser (GamalielRatsey), Wednesday, 13 May 2009 15:10 (fourteen years ago) link
Those red hardback Dennis Wheatley books were part of a Reader's Digest set, I think every house in the UK/Ireland had them in the '80's.
Probably a correlation with other books that appear on tthis list a RD offers.
― Old Big 'OOS (AKA the Cupwinner) (darraghmac), Wednesday, 13 May 2009 15:11 (fourteen years ago) link
Yes, suspect that RD are responsible for much of this. Looking at charity shop bookshelf of hardbacks from a distance, getting closer and realising they're all Readers Digest Condensed Books is always a gloomy experience.
― woofwoofwoof, Wednesday, 13 May 2009 15:52 (fourteen years ago) link
Macaulay's History of England? You go to some classy charity shops.
"Breakfast at Tiffanys by Truman Capote - the small green edition that came free with some womens magazine"I had this and never realised before, huh.
― thomp, Wednesday, 13 May 2009 16:14 (fourteen years ago) link
Classics of 19th-Century literature in TV/movie tie-in editions.
For the past couple of years: A Night Without Armor, poems by the briefly popular singer Jewel. Her moment of fame is so over.
― Aimless, Wednesday, 13 May 2009 17:59 (fourteen years ago) link
tom wolfe's a man in full has been at every book sale ive ever been to
― johnny crunch, Wednesday, 13 May 2009 18:11 (fourteen years ago) link
From Amazon.com:
A Night Without Armor, hardcover -- 662 used & new from $0.01
― Aimless, Wednesday, 13 May 2009 18:27 (fourteen years ago) link
http://i263.photobucket.com/albums/ii141/sonyreader/puzo.jpg
― mark cl, Wednesday, 13 May 2009 18:55 (fourteen years ago) link
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51GWZX31JTL._SL500_AA240_.jpg816 Used & new from £0.01
― Ismael Klata, Wednesday, 13 May 2009 19:41 (fourteen years ago) link
"Less so nowadays, but hardbacks of The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade used to haunt every second-hand shop I'd go into, especially the 25p random table. Also, The Romany Rye and/or Lavengro by George Borrow.In poetry sections, creaky editions of Sir Walter Scott's poems."
Ingoldsby Legends!
― Henry Frog (Frogman Henry), Wednesday, 13 May 2009 21:46 (fourteen years ago) link
Agatha Christie's entire collection, always.
Also old Penguin versions of A Passage to India and Pride and Prejudice.
― franny glass, Thursday, 14 May 2009 02:29 (fourteen years ago) link
http://bonsaisgigantes.net/parodiasanimadas/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/paul-reiser-couplehood.jpg
― corey, Monday, 7 March 2011 01:18 (thirteen years ago) link
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/515JT4XBCFL.jpg
― textbook blows on the head (dowd), Monday, 7 March 2011 01:26 (thirteen years ago) link
the shipping news
― plax (ico), Monday, 7 March 2011 01:30 (thirteen years ago) link
saw that displayed prominently in a gallery bookshop yesterday for some reason
― joe smooth's 'promised blend' instant coffee (haitch), Monday, 7 March 2011 01:39 (thirteen years ago) link
Karel Čapek - War With the Newts (There's a Norwegian bookclub edition from the 70s that's /everywhere/. Ditto their edition of One Day in the Life Of Ivan Mumblevich)
― Øystein, Monday, 7 March 2011 13:16 (thirteen years ago) link
http://i2.squidoocdn.com/resize/squidoo_images/250/draft_lens9008791module79321771photo_1263909562and-ladies-of-club2.jpg
― The all-jazz interpreter (Eazy), Monday, 7 March 2011 15:27 (thirteen years ago) link
alexander mccall smith is eeeeverywhere, in great volume.
― Antoine Bugleboy (Merdeyeux), Tuesday, 8 March 2011 23:30 (thirteen years ago) link
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51THS318YHL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
― portrait of velleity (woof), Wednesday, 9 March 2011 09:45 (thirteen years ago) link
i had at least two copies of that by accident
― thomp, Wednesday, 9 March 2011 11:12 (thirteen years ago) link
why are there so many copies of it floating around? was it massively popular amongst penguin-reading autodidacts?
― thomp, Wednesday, 9 March 2011 11:13 (thirteen years ago) link
I guess? I suppose it was a bestseller in the day - mass culture dissolving working class tradition was a popular angst theme I imagine; plus it was probably on a lot of humanities and social science introductory reading lists. But i dunno, its multi-copy presence in every second hand shop in Britain is impressive. Maybe I should read it (it looks dull tho)
― portrait of velleity (woof), Wednesday, 9 March 2011 11:21 (thirteen years ago) link
i remember it being p smart and honest; a lot of it is more in the way of a disguised memoir. but i never finished the second half, the mass culture half, or even got more than a few pages into it.
― thomp, Wednesday, 9 March 2011 11:55 (thirteen years ago) link
its one of the foundational texts of 20th century brit cultural studies along w/ culture and society by raymond williams, and i think it was also read widely outside academia, back in the day
its a pretty common bk - esp that edition - but i don't see it in that many charity shops in glasgow (when compared to hornby, potter etc etc)
― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 9 March 2011 12:16 (thirteen years ago) link
http://books.google.com/books?id=SmXHxPavANkC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&l=220
― Buff Orpington (Abbbottt), Wednesday, 9 March 2011 13:20 (thirteen years ago) link
Kate Morton, The House At Riverton - has the same spine as another book I'd been looking for, every charity shop has piles of the things and none of whatever it was I was after
― Ismael Klata, Wednesday, 9 March 2011 13:55 (thirteen years ago) link
http://www.swordfishingcentral.com/images/store/400182188292.jpg
― A Very Small Bag of Phrases (Eazy), Wednesday, 9 March 2011 17:30 (thirteen years ago) link
That Hoggart's still in print, it seems:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0141191589.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
― the most cuddlesome bug that ever was borned (James Morrison), Wednesday, 9 March 2011 23:06 (thirteen years ago) link
was at a p large tent book sale today where i saw a volunteer file in an entire box full of 'me talk pretty one day', prob 20 copies plus there were already a bunch around that section & im sure elsewhere
― johnny crunch, Saturday, 16 July 2011 22:22 (twelve years ago) link
When I used to volunteer in a charity shop we once received a massive hardback copy of the Karma Sutra, we used to sit it facing with the cover forward (as opposed to just the spine, like a normal bookshelf) and laugh at people trying not to pick it up/skim it/acknowledge it.
We also used to get Mills & Boon constantly and they would sell so fast, which I just don't understand - there seems to be about three different plots between the entire series.
― ha ha ha ha jack my swag (boxedjoy), Saturday, 16 July 2011 23:24 (twelve years ago) link
Ah, I've bored people with how I was in an apartment in Berlin with just 25 Mills and Boon books and War and Peace. I got through about 12 of the M&B before finally succumbing. They were all pretty much bored suburban housewife with either unpleasant/dead/no husband meets in what all things considered must be really quite unlikely circumstances an uncontrollably rich arab stud farmer/american pilot entrepreneur/russian oligarch/unbuttoned English toff/sensitive Italian playboy. This man will be generally unusually liberal, loving, wealthy, sexually accomplished, and see things in the woman others haven't and in certain cases won't mind that the woman has children in fact be surprisingly good with them. In return the woman will educate them a little in aspects of life that their rude, uncontrollably masculine/wealthy upbringing hasn't educated them in, idk like buying a can of beans from the supermarket or getting the right settings on the washing machine. They will feel enlightened by this. There will be a couple of hiccups of some sort, one where the woman can't believe that this man is interested in them, and another where it looks like it's not going to work out, but incredibly and against the odds he is and it does.
I believe that chick lit has posed quite a few problems for the traditional Mills & Boon template, which is known to be exacting. Some female readers, it turns out, like to be seen to be more emancipated that the traditional Mills & Boon story had allowed them to be, and maybe even show glimpses of feisty humour and cynical indifference towards males. This was quite difficult to embrace for M&B, and I think what happened was that they started producing a different series, for the more emancipated urban style of woman. I haven't read any of these, so I don't how they work, but I imagine that although the flavour and expressions might be slightly different, the plot probably isn't. Maybe the male is a bit more flawed, maybe the woman has more agency in it all, but i can't believe it doesn't end with an unusually desirable man being netted. Or maybe it does, idk. There's probably no more literary merit, although to be fair to M&B, there's clearly not a word out of place, which while it means the reader knows what they are getting, also means there are no flights of fancy. Reading 10 in a row is rather gruelling is all I'm saying.
To change tack slightly, just going past Oxfam this morning, wtf is London Dialogues by 'Tiresias'. I keep getting Cyril Connolly in my head, but that could just be 'London' + 'myth ref'.
― Fizzles the Chimp (GamalielRatsey), Sunday, 17 July 2011 07:10 (twelve years ago) link
The Light in the Piazza- I see it at flea markets, church thrift stores, library book sales, garage sales, on shelves at estate sales, Savers, Goodwill, Salvation Army and it has been at every library I have ever worked in, of course. Book has been haunting me for 22 years.
― *tera, Sunday, 17 July 2011 07:35 (twelve years ago) link
Checked that London Dialogues book. self, published, Some boring-ass '80s Hampstead types talking about the state of the country. Nothing to see here.
― Fizzles the Chimp (GamalielRatsey), Sunday, 17 July 2011 12:15 (twelve years ago) link
it's a collection of coren's never very funny columns in punch magazine, so named bcz he -- amusingly! -- noted that the topselling books of the time were abt either cats or golf or hitler, so proposed a title that somehow combined them all
― mark s, Thursday, 29 November 2018 17:08 (five years ago) link
This being Oregon, I never fail to see multiple copies of Krakauer's Into the Wild. Sometimes there will be a round dozen of them shelved side-by-side. They are more prevalent even than Wild, Cheryl Strayed, which rarely shows up in herds greater than five at once.
I still see some of the Bridget Jones series of novels, but they are fading away to obscurity after a period of ubiquity. Tom Clancy is finally sinking into the sunset, too.
― A is for (Aimless), Tuesday, 26 February 2019 02:54 (five years ago) link
Just dropped off a bunch of books (and some CDs) at Housing Works. Wondering whether I am going to that freeing feeling or an emotional hangover/backlash or both and in what order or in what intensity.
― The Fearless Thread Killers (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 2 September 2019 16:29 (four years ago) link
The past four or five years I've noticed that Nicholas Sparks' novels occupy at least two feet of shelf space in all the charity bookshops I frequent.
― A is for (Aimless), Monday, 2 September 2019 17:06 (four years ago) link
Entire shelves for James Patterson
― brimstead, Monday, 2 September 2019 17:19 (four years ago) link
entire warehouses filled with gently used Elegance of the Hedgehog trade paperbacks
― hoostanbank de reason lyrics mp4 hd video download (unregistered), Monday, 2 September 2019 17:35 (four years ago) link