Sunday, July 01, 2007

I Got A Hole In The Head Too

I had to make a trip to the post office yesterday to pick up a package. A big package. A big, heavy package. It was a box containing 157 paperback books that I won in an eBay auction. I only wanted about half of them, but for $10.95 plus shipping, how could I resist? I guess my mailman was too lazy to drop it off on my doorstep, so I had to go get it. Can't say as I blame him too much, as this box measured about four feet long and weighed probably thirty pounds.

The trouble with buying more books is that I have no place to put them. The majority of my book collection is stationed in a corner of my bedroom. Not on shelves, but in a couple dozen stacks shoved together, which means I can't really find anything I need in a hurry. I also have four more stacks on my dresser, another bagful on the floor, and now these 157 piled on a table. I separated the books I wanted to keep from the books I don't want, which I can hopefully unload at a used book store.

The books I plan to keep are mostly older "pulp fiction" titles, mysteries, sci-fi, horror. I have been collecting Edward S. Aaron's Sam Durell adventure novels lately, which are tight, exciting stories. I also picked up some Doc Savage and Remo Williams novels, none of which I've read. I got a couple of Shell Scott mysteries by Richard S. Prather, which are entertaining stories that read like spoofs. Also included in the lot were novelizations of movies like THE GAUNTLET, THE END, SLAUGHTER'S BIG RIP-OFF and WALKING TALL. And added to my collection are a few more novels by an author named John Whitlatch whom I recently discovered. Very little seems to be known about him, but the two books by him I've read are bizarre, tough, two-fisted, startlingly right-wing, slightly racist actioners that could easily have been adapted to 85-minute B-movies in 1970, which is about when they were written.

2 comments:

Robert said...

cough cough * packrat * cough * cough

Those Edward Aaron paperbacks seem to be fairly easy to find. I've got a couple that I have yet to read, but the guy whose stuff I have really had fun reading is Don Smith. Most of it falls under the series banner "Secret Mission" and focuses on an agent named Phil Sherman. Pure entertainment; I think I have all but 5 of the books in the series.

katie said...

geez. that's a shitload of books. maybe you should keep track of all the books you've read. i'm up to 192 movies. yay. not bad for me.

invest in some bookshelves from ebay.