Wednesday, May 23, 2012

PaperBack

James Branch Cabell, Figures of Earth, Ballantine, 1969

3 comments:

Fred Blosser said...

Thanks Bill. I think I say that sincerely . . . I think. These cover scans have prompted me to dig out the old Ballantine AF edition of THE NIGHT LAND that I'd held on to after all these years through six moves, and to order copies of other entries in the series that now look interesting to me after having failed to buy them way-back-when. This means that I'm juggling THE NIGHT LAND with LADY, GO DIE!, and -- once they arrive from various on-line dealers -- I'll now be adding DOUBLE PHOENIX, VATHEK, and SHAVING OF SHAGPAT to other to-be-read books on the side table. I still remember buying the two volumes of THE NIGHT LAND ($1.25 each) on a rainy day in July 1972, a few weeks before Donna and I got married.

Unknown said...

I hope I haven't led you astray, Fred. I bought the volumes haphazardly, and now I wish I'd collected the whole set. Most of them are probably available at reasonable prices, but some of them are pretty pricey, I think. I don't even know for sure what I have.

Reading THE NIGHT LAND and LADY, GO DIE should be an interesting study in contrasting styles!

Fred Blosser said...

Luckily, the ones I decided to go after are modestly priced. The various Clark Ashton Smith collections are listed at double- and triple-digit figures, but I'd hung onto those. If I can't find anything worse to gripe about than too many books to read, and I can't, then I'm doing pretty well. Hodgson and Spillane/Collins are compelling storytellers, but yeah, the similarities end there.