Random Bookage and Artage

Bob White is an artist and flyfishing guide whose work has appeared, well, pretty much everywhere. He also illustrated the digital cover to the Mouthful of Feathers e-book (What? You mean you haven't bought your copy yet?). I don't know him personally and have never met the guy, but damn, I love his work. I'll never be able to afford any original artwork, from anyone, but if I could I believe I'd take this little beauty, The Grouse of North America. That's nice...

I was in a used bookshop not long ago and picked up (for a fiver!) a copy of an old coffee-table book entitled The Great American Shooting Prints, published by Alfred A. Knopf back in 1972, when I was still in diapers. "The Hunting Life in America as portrayed in paintings and lithographs from the 1820s to the present" is how it's described, and that's pretty much what it is. Most of the usual suspects (up to '72, anyway) are represented, and it's a nice book, with nice prints by some of my favorites (Lynn Bogue Hunt, Carl Rungius, Bob Kuhn, Richard Bishop, etc, etc...) but I always find myself in something of a quandary about such books that are nice but not worth much: do I keep them intact on the bookshelf, or do I cut out a few of my favorite prints and frame them?

I have another book, a nice, leather-bound first edition of Robert Bishop's Bishop's Wildfowl  (think it was self-published back in the 40s) that's printed on really nice paper and has some very frame-able etchings in it that would look great on the wall, but the book (which isn't really worth a whole lot) is so nice that I hesitate to do so. It'd be so damn convenient to be wealthy so I could just go out and buy the originals, but hell, I can't even afford prints. Recently on one of the auction sites I was outbid on a vintage set of Lynn Bogue Hunt prints that Field & Stream published back in the 40s, entitled Fishing in America and Game Birds of America. I had high hopes, hopes that were ultimately dashed when the bidding went way beyond my limit (which was about the price of a tank of gas...for a Prius). Maybe I will cut up those books...

On that same trip picked up a good-condition first printing of Kurt Vonnegut's Deadeye Dick, which again, isn't worth much but was a nice find of one of Vonnegut's lesser works.

Also recently bought a wee slip (95 pages) of a John Graves book with the charmingly un-PC, don't-give-a-damn-whether-this-sells-or-not title of My Dogs and Guns. I actually had a long personal history with this book before I bought it. I first saw it in the Norman, Oklahoma Hastings store way back in 2008 when I was home visiting family. At the time it was marked full price, $19.95, and I thought, "I love John Graves, but there's no way in hell I'm paying twenty bucks for a couple of glorified magazine articles." So I put it back on the shelf, and there it stayed, literally, for the next six years. I would periodically check on it when I was back home, just to see if it'd been marked down. It never was. It also obviously never sold (which tells you a bit about the general state of John Graves under-appreciation) and remarkably, never got remaindered. It just sat there, forgotten and overlooked. After Graves died, I decided the next time I was in Norman I'd just buy the damn book suspecting that most of Graves' lesser-known works would be going out of print and becoming hard to find. And of course, the next time I was in town, the book was gone. I chalked it up to stupidity on my part and let it go. Another year passed. A couple weeks ago I was in that same Hastings, browsing, when I'll be damned but there was My Dogs and Guns, sitting on a cart of clearance books, waiting for a home. Where it had spent the past year I have no idea. Of course I bought it. Kismet. Or maybe dumb luck. It's a wonderful read. Graves is one of those authors for whom the the world is a poorer place by his not having published more than he did.

Also, blog reader, FB friend and fellow reptile enthusiast Todd Schaffer, who works in a Florida library and has graciously sent me a number of cool outdoor-themed books from the discard pile there (I really need to be working in a library...), recently sent me another one...

In gratitude, I told him I'd save a turtle or snake crossing the road in his honor.

And lastly, on that same auction where I was outbid on the Lynn Bogue Hunt prints, there's currently a bidding war going on for a first edition, first printing (with dustjacket) copy of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.

 Currently over five hundred bucks. Why can't I ever find anything like that in a thrift store? Probably because even the thrift stores are putting the good stuff (and even the bad) up for auction now. That auction site with the book and the Hunt prints? Yep, it's Goodwill, the same place where I worked in college, and passed up god-knows-how-many great books. I used to love thrift stores and pawn shops. Everyone (including me) likes to bitch about how the Internet has ruined reading (may or may not be true) but damn it, no one bitches about how it's ruined bargain-basement scavenging...