What are you reading? 2023

I stopped by my local Half Priced Books yesterday to do a bit of perusing. Often times I find that I really have to hunt around and even compare the same titles side-by-side on the shelves as HPB have whacky pricing. i.e., a better copy of the same book will often be cheaper than a beat and worse quality mass market paperback right next to it on the shelf. Yesterday as an example I found an older but lower quality copy of Moby Dick for $100 that was hardback but paperboard and cloth, no moir inner pages, etc. and that book was probably worth about $35-40 in the condition that it was in. Right underneath of it, they have a full leatherbound, silk moir front and backs, Easton Press copy in really excellent condition of Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev miraculously for only $10, and it's the most recent 2008 binding so that book is worth $80-90 in that condition. Boggles the mind.

So I picked up an excellent condition 1943 hardback copy of John Milton's Paradise Lost and Other Poems, a Classics Club edition published by Walter J. Black Inc. - Roslyn, New York, that was on final markdown for $4. A steal.

Also picked up a 1961 blue cloth hardcover, no dust jacket Random House edition of James Joyce's Ulysses for $10, and this book is in excellent condition as well, and worth at least $25-35 and very hard to find this edition. I can't complain when I find good deals but some of the pricing just makes little sense at this place and you have to know what you're looking for and it's a true treasure hunt. This book for only $10 while plain and Chinese printed Barnes and Noble hardcover F. Scott Fitzgerald collections were selling for $17. Again it boggles the mind.

I intend to go back in the next week or two and snag that $10 Easton Press copy of Fathers and Sons by Turgenev even though I recently purchased a paperback 1980's copy of it for nearly the same price! It may have been $5-6 can't quite remember but that's the wackiness. A $100 copy of selling in the same store for $10 out the door in immaculate condition while across the store, the paperback roughed up college lit library/trade copy of it sold for close to $10 as well.

A year or two ago, I would have mostly settled for a nice any-old-copy of paperback or hardback depending on conditions of most any book. As I gradually began to learn that nicer hardcover editions of books were not actually printed in great numbers as I'd assumed, I simultaneously began to discover that good books are becoming rare and pricey. Couple this with other quality issues with newer publishers cheapening materials and that most books are not archival quality or nice paper, I began digging down the rabbit hole. Now I often try to find the classics in Easton Press, Folio Society, Franklin Library, Alfred Knopf, or Modern Library printing.

I know, a lot of rambling about books but I've gotten more into finding higher quality binding and prints and you could say it's quickly become a new hobby.

I'm still reading Dante's Divine Comedy and I've just barely started it.

I just can't see treating someone else's borrowed property with such disrespect like that. I borrow from the library all the time and I'm super careful with the books and often times, I'll even carefully erase marks that someone else may have left in the books years ago. I'm also really against writing in the marginalia and can't stand seeing it in a nice book!

Plainsman I can't imagine how much an original First Folio copy would be worth. Millions if signed? Probably nearly considered priceless.

>Out of perhaps 750 copies printed, 235 are known to remain, most of which are kept in either public archives or private collections. More than one third of the extant copies are housed at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which is home to a total of 82 First Folios.