Book sale loot

It has taken me even longer than usual to get round to writing about the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library Big Book Sale, which was held from last Tuesday until yesterday. However, this year we actually made two trips to the sale, so that will have to serve as some sort of excuse for my sluggishness.

I don't know if I've ever mentioned before that the opening night of the sale is a preview night that is "for members only". To be a member you only have to donate a certain amount to the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, and your two tickets to the preview night appear in your mailbox as if placed there by elves a week or so before the sale. Now, the "members only" part makes it sound like the preview night is a really special and exclusive event for a select few, but in fact every book geek and every bookseller, amateur or professional, from miles around apparently make their annual donations and attend the preview night.

This is the night when I've always gone, and it's truly an adventure and a madhouse. The amateur booksellers are an ongoing peril much loathed by actual readers, as they frantically scan the barcodes of every single book with their cell phones to see what the going rate is and whether they could make a buck or two by snatching it up. (At least I assume these are all amateurs, as I would like to believe that professional booksellers still have some actual knowledge of books and know at a glance whether a book is saleable or not, without their iPhone telling them so, but perhaps I'm naive and that kind of bookseller no longer exists.) At any rate, these folks are often oblivious to other people in their path, leading occasionally to the exchange of harsh words and dirty looks.

Then there's the fact that the sale organizers kindly provide full-size grocery carts for the convenience of the attendees. A lovely gesture, except that when you have at least a few hundred people frantically scrambling for books, traffic jams, collisions, and the occasional trampling of less aggressive and more diminutive shoppers are inevitable. (Okay, perhaps I exaggerate, but I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see a dazed shopper being helped to his or her feet with shopping cart wheel tracks across his or her chest. The fact that it hasn't happened yet is a testament to the good luck that piles of old books bring with them.) Of course, I should hasten to add that my worn out granny cart (sorry, no picture this year, but trust me, it's even more ramshackle than it was at the last sale) couldn't possibly count as a hazard or an annoyance to anyone, and I avow that I've never done more than graze another shopper (though I confess I hope that the victims of any such grazings were fiendishly scanning bar codes at the time).

All of these factors were exacerbated on this occasion by the fact that the sale was moved to a different building at the Fort Mason Center—a nicer building, admittedly, but also a smaller one. So the amount of chaos experienced increased in direct proportion to the decrease in square footage.

Sadly however, the chaos really didn't pay off very well this year. Only a small portion of the tower of books you see at the top of this post was acquired on Tuesday evening. But I am a glutton for punishment, and something made me decide that we should return on Saturday morning and see if any other exciting books had appeared on the tables. With the result that I fully intend, when the next sale rolls around in April, to skip the Greek tragedy of preview night altogether and simply go when the other quiet, civilized, cheerful book geeks go.

For on Saturday morning there was nary a barcode scanner in sight, and indeed only about a fifth as many people overall as on preview night. And imagine my surprise when, right off the bat, I began to unearth some excellent additions to my library. Indeed, at least two-thirds of my finds (and most of the best ones) resulted from our Saturday visit. So, no more barcode scanners for me (though I will somewhat regret no longer having the opportunity of grazing their shins with my cart...).

But now, on to the books themselves:

I've had luck before with finding E. M. Delafield books at the sale, but I was surprised to find an American edition of her 1933 novel, Gay Life, still resting on a table four days after the preview night. According to the Bookman, in this novel Delafield "deserts her provinces and takes to the Cote d'Azur, where her story reveals a fortnight's goings-on in a Grand Hotel." This doesn't seem to be one of Delafield's best-known books, and perhaps there's a reason for that, but it's going to look just fine on my shelves. I also always enjoy an inscription that gives a feel for a book's past owners, and this one was apparently inscribed in no less impressive a place than Omaha, Nebraska.

I've also had some good luck in the past with Margery Sharp books at the sale, and despite the fact that I already have a copy of The Nutmeg Tree (1937), I couldn't resist this  movie tie-in edition.

It's complete with dustjacket, albeit a slightly bedraggled one:

It was apparently published to coincide with the feature film version of the book, Julia Misbehaves (1948), which starred Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon (not to mention Elizabeth Taylor and Peter Lawson). Has anyone seen the movie?

Another fun find was a cute copy of Jan Struther's  A Pocketful of Pebbles (1946). 

Apparently this is an American release which followed the success of the film version of Mrs. Miniver, and it includes the complete text of Struther's only other major book, Try Anything Twice, plus additional poetry and articles.

It also had an inscription from just after World War II:

The mystery section of the sale was a bit disappointing this year, but on Tuesday night one of my only exciting finds was a copy of A Fine and Private Place (1947) by Mary Fitt (better known to her friends as classical scholar Kathleen Freeman.

I don't know anything much about Fitt yet, but here is the publisher's description from the jacket flaps:

I also nabbed a copy of E. C. R. Lorac's Shepherd's Crook (1953) in an ex-library copy that is very much the worse for wear, but still has (most of) its interesting dustjacket. (It also looks considerably better after I carefully sliced off its old mylar cover and replaced it with a new one.) 

This is an American edition of the mystery that appeard in the U.K. as Crook o'Lune: 

I've yet to read anything by Lorac (pseudonym of Edith Caroline Rivett), but even if it's not to my taste the cover alone is worth the $1 I paid for it. And the back flap and back cover have lists of other books and authors which I'll have to look at more closely:

I've also never read anything by Sheila Kaye-Smith, so I picked up her postwar novel The Lardners and the Laurelwoods (1948). 

From the description on the flaps, it's hard to know when the book is set and whether it will make much use of postwar themes, but I'll keep you posted.

Now, time for a bit of a confession. I'm sure many of you are fans of Nancy Mitford for her classic duo of novels, The Pursuit of Love (1945) and Love in a Cold Climate (1949). I hate to admit it, but I've failed in both of my attempts to navigate the first of those. It just seemed like too much to me. But regardless, I found myself unable to resist a more or less pristine (though naked) American edition of the novel Mitford wrote next, The Blessing (1951). Part of the reason was that it came complete with its original Book-of-the-Month Club insert (which of course I will show you here—how could I not?). So I shall try to navigate one of her less famous novels and see how I get on with that—perhaps I just perversely dislike the most acclaimed and loved novels of the time?

I was a little bit reluctant to add Elizabeth von Arnim's The Caravaners (1909) to my collection, only because so many of her works are available as ebooks and believe me, there is a limited amount of space in our apartment. However, in the end I couldn't resist, and so this tale of a German couple caravaning through England—told, apparently, by the cantankerous husband—is now on my TBR shelf.

It's also illustrated throughout by Arthur Litle:

Those are the main old old old books I came across by British women. My other finds were either newer editions or by non-Brits.

In the former category, I picked up two of the old black Viragos which don't turn up very often these days. They are Antonia White's two final novels, The Sugar House (1952) and Beyond the Glass (1954). I looked carefully in case there was a copy of The Lost Traveller (1950), which, together with the two I found, forms a sort of trilogy of sequels to her most famous work, Frost in May (1933), but it was not to be found. White is not, shall we say, the most cheerful of authors, but I found Frost in May interesting, so I'm game.

Rumer Godden is one of my favorite authors (though I realize with horror that I've never reviewed one of her books here), but the only works from late in her career that I've read are her two wonderful memoirs. Now that Coromandel Sea Change (1991), one of her final novels for adults, has a place on my TBR shelves, I will have a chance to do that.

And the last book by an author on my list is also by far the most recent. I've never read anything by mystery writer Gwendoline Butler, who only died in 2013, but I'll sample her work with Coffin Knows the Answer (2002).

I mentioned Elizabeth Lemarchand on my Grown-Up School Story List, for her debut, Death of an Old Girl (1967), which appeared several years too late for her to make my Overwhelming List. Sadly, Old Girl was nowhere to be found at the book sale, but I picked up the blandest possible book sale edition of a later book, Unhappy Returns (1977). Another confession: I actually recently read Lemarchand's Buried in the Past (1974) and enjoyed it, but I never quite got round to writing about it here.

Of course, there are a fair number of authors who feel like they belong on my Overwhelming List, even if they don't. Ngaio Marsh is a favorite of mine, and she's so closely associated with the great British women mystery authors that it seems a shame to leave her off, but she is in fact from New Zealand. I had to add a nice hardcover of her third from final novel, Grave Mistake (1978), to my collection.

And on the back cover is a charming photo of Marsh:

Jill Paton Walsh is far too recent to qualify for my list, though she is likely known to many of you because she completed Dorothy Sayers' unfinished Peter Wimsey novel, Thrones, Dominations (1998), and has since written several more books of her own featuring Sayers' famous detective. But the book that I found is The Bad Quarto (2007), apparently the last of four novels featuring Imogen Quy, a part-time college nurse at the fictitious St. Agatha's College at Cambridge. It sounds intriguing.

And the last of my finds from the mystery tables (which don't seem so disappointing now that I'm writing about them) was literally a complete mystery to me when I came across it, but the cover was irresistible. Murder at Calamity House (1947) is apparently the second and final novel by Canadian Ann Cardwell (pseudonym of Jean Makins Powley). Her first novel, Crazy to Kill (1941), set (you guessed it) in a mental institution, seems to be more famous than Calamity House, and there's a bit about it here. Whether I'll like the book or not remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: the cover alone was worth the hefty $1 price I paid!

There's also another author list on the back flap to explore (albeit one with very few women):

Although I haven't mentioned him here yet, of course Andy was doing his usual perusals of the tables, with his (also as usual) hopeless list of authors I'd like to find. But after giving up on my list, he kept poking around and eventually brought me three books that he thought might be interesting to me. Among other things, I had had him looking in the children's section for any Girls Gone By titles that might have slipped in between old copies of Charlotte's Web and Pippi Longstocking. Naturally, there was nary a GGB title to be found, but from the children's table, he brought me two books that, though American, I couldn't resist.

Margaret Sutton, as some of you undoubtedly know better than I, wrote dozens of children's books, most famously the Judy Bolton series of mysteries (I knew about Nancy Drew, but have never met Judy). The Clue in the Patchwork Quilt (1941) was written in the early years of WWII (any bets as to whether it mentions the war at all or not?) and is at least worth a perusal.

The book is rather cheaply done, with the result that its illustrations, by Pelagie Doane, don't come through very well, but the endpapers are rather nice:

Andy also found Sally Found Out (1930), by Lilian Garis, who apparently wrote hundreds of books for children. 

A description of the book on Goodreads (presumably from the book's jacket flap?) is a little high on perkiness for my taste, but also piques my interest: "Sally was determined to leave school and try earning money on her own account. And that experience furnished her with enough adventures literally to pack a book full of the very kind of material that girls like Sally delight in reading about." Hmmmmm. And there are illustrations by Thelma Gooch:

Finally, Andy picked up a charming Pocket Books edition of a book and author I'd never heard of—The Walsh Girls (1943), by Elizabeth Janeway. 

I admit I bought the book purely for its cover, but Janeway actually sounds more interesting than I had expected. According to her Guardian obituary, she published seven novels, and by the 1960s had become a prominent feminist, forming friendships with the likes of Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, and Kate Millett. The Guardian describes her novels as "focused on the family situation, with occasional glimpses at the struggles of women in modern society," so there may be more to the book than just its cover...

I did relatively well in finding some interesting books by American writers. I've mentioned Mary Lasswell here before, as one of my favorite American humorists, and on Saturday morning I snatched up a copy of her final "Suds" novel, Let's Go for Broke (1962), featuring the same trio of boozy women from San Diego who grazed her earlier novels Suds in Your Eye (1942), High Time (1944), One on the House (1949), Wait for the Wagon (1951), and Tooner Schooner (1953).

The complete series is now available as ebooks, but of course the ebooks won't have this delightful dustjacket...

I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I've never read Anita Loos' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925), which is considered a classic of American humor and has been a perennial bestseller since it first appeared. 

It was also, of course, the basis for the classic 1953 film with Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe. This copy isn't a proper "first" in that it is from the tenth printing in March of 1926, though the book must have been a smash right off the bat, since the first printing had been only four months earlier. At any rate, it's a cute little book with delightful illustrations:

And I'm intrigued by its inscription...

I've been meaning to place a new Persephone order for quite a while, but now I won't need to order Helen Hull's Heat Lightning (1932). Persephone reprinted it a couple of years back, and it was also a Book-of-the-Month Club selection when it first appeared. Persephone's description of the book notes: "It is the summer after the Great Crash of 1929 and, as in so many Persephone books, everything happens and nothing happens." Sounds perfect.

And here is an inscription that I found particularly touching. I think it's because of the shakiness of the writing, suggesting perhaps an older man giving a gift to his literary wife?

And finally, the last of the truly old books I acquired: I was rather astonished to find (while crawling around under a table, rifling through the boxes of books for which there was not yet room on the tops of the tables) what appears to be a true first edition of the second novel, The Blind Bow-Boy (1923), by one of my favorite male obscurities. Carl Van Vechten was a controversial but fascinating figure—a relatively openly gay man at a time when such openness was rare (he was married, but it seems to have been a matter of friendship and convenience, as his wife was aware of his relationships with men), and also a promoter and publicizer of Harlem Renaissance authors, with all of the complexities that went with being a white patron of black artists. He published seven novels from 1922 to 1930, and although I've read numerous blasé and condescending dismissals of these by scholars who (supposedly) know, I find them endlessly entertaining and interesting. Sadly, the most famous of his novels is a Harlem-focused novel with what is now an incendiary title, N****r Heaven (a slang term that in the 1920s denoted the upper balcony seats in theatres where African-Americans were allowed to sit), and is also by far his weakest and least entertaining. The others are funny and campy, all permeated by a gay sensibility, and the best of the bunch, his last, Parties (1930), is a perverse, dark farce about Jazz Age depravity, in which the main character is happily bisexual (a terrible drunk, like most of the other characters, but at least not tormented by his sexuality, like most other such characters of the time). Oddly, Van Vechten gave up fiction after 1930, but went on to became a famous portrait photographer, with clients ranging from Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday to Marlon Brando and Gertrude Stein (the last of whom was a close friend).

This book also has by far the most eccentric frontispiece of the books I acquired:

The photo of my loot also shows three other books with little relevance to my blog. As odd as it might seem for me to be a Hemingway fan, I have been ever since high school, and I decided it might be time to re-read True at First Light (1999), one of several posthumous publications making use of a massive unfinished project he worked on over the course of decades. Then, I've always meant to read more of Isaac Bashevis Singer and of Henry Green, so I grabbed up nice copies of two of their books as well.

So that's that for another six months or so. How do you think I did?