McHuston Booksellers

Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Tag: Broken Arrow (Page 89 of 141)

Grimm and Bear it.

June 5, 2013 /

Once upon a time, I read Stephen King novels and dwelled with the beasts of the night. At least, those on the printed page. I guzzled goosebumps and chased those creepers down in the cellar. Then I found Faulkner.

Maybe it wasn’t classic literature that broke the cycle. Could have been a cheesy mystery. The point being – some book came along and ended my nearly-exclusive diet of scary. Pretty much cold turkey.

Fear became an almost forgotten emotion for me. Well – I’m not claiming fearlessness. I’m closer to a First Reader than First Responder. I just don’t find myself in situations that are scary. No bungee jumping. Sky-diving?

Are you kidding?

I always agreed with my buddy Michael, who questioned the fundamental idea of leaping out of a perfectly good airplane. Some of you snow ski. Me? Never. Snow is to me as water is to the Wicked Witch. (I’m MELTING! Yeah, yeah… Give me melting over snow and ice any time.)

There was a balmy morning that I jumped off the back of a boat and immediately spotted several reef sharks in close proximity. That made me uncomfortable. I was breathing pretty quickly. (Forty minutes worth of Scuba-tank-air gone in about twelve.) Still, I wouldn’t describe the dive as scary. For me, at least, the scary feeling comes when things are out of my own control. Like sitting in the passenger seat when the driver is under seventeen and shooting for a learner’s permit. THAT can be scary.

Even swimming with sharks I knew what I was supposed to do and kept the plan front and center in my thoughts. Tense? Sure. Anxious? You’re darn-tootin’. Scared? Not really. Lack of fear does not mean brave. (I admit to feeling pretty stupid later for jumping into shark-infested water, just to experience it – After all, the boat wasn’t sinking…)

At some point, it becomes tougher to find things outside our collection of experiences. With time, we all develop a mental catalog of those things that jump-start the adrenaline, like things that go bump in the night. Or go bump in the next room. Or behind you when you’re standing alone in the kitchen.

What was that?

Ice cubes melting loudly in the sink. That’s all. Refrigerator compressor kicking on. Or last night’s tacos come back to haunt… more ghastly than ghostly.

There was a sort of adrenaline-feel for me, I think, associated with scary movies – a spine-tingly sensation without the risks associated with activities like lion-taming and human-cannon-balling.

As to frightening films – I can’t name a recent one I’ve seen. Some ads look interesting, I’ll admit, in a PBS-anthropological sort of way. As in, what made me watch something like that, back then?

Which brings us to Grimm. Some of you will have seen the show. It has had several seasons of which I have been completely oblivious.

Premise?

Good vs. Evil – at its most basic level. Big scare is mixed in there between commercials (In this case, in between the Netflix gaps where the TV ads would have been inserted) where the Grimm-guy sees the monsters that are knocking off regular folks left and right. No one else can see them. Until it’s too late.

I was caught off-guard by the show, I will admit. A lot of years without that particular tension. Scary-osity. Unlike most of Stephen King’s works, though, Grimm manages a humorous release valve that was lacking in those old scary novels I used to read.

A grin keeps the Grimm at bay. Keeps the heart beating in between frights. Allows necessary respiration.

No peeing the pantalones.

Maybe I’ll give Episode 2 a chance.

Don’t be scared! Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main Street, BA OK!

Have you done it?

June 2, 2013 /

Come on, baby! Don’t beekle the dice!

That one still gets stuck in the mental song-loop on occasion. The other day, after the McCartney concert at the BOK Center, a Facebook friend posted a picture of a Beatles record (those big pre-CDs) along with a snippet of song lyric. Naturally, Don’t Beekle the Dice popped into my head.

It is one of those songs that aren’t really too deep. No ethereal connections. No double-entendres about politics or the deeper meaning of life. Easy to sing along with.

It turns out – while singing along – I’ve been mangling the words. My whole life, I suppose. I tend to pay more attention to the instruments than the vocals, for whatever reason. As a kid, I was singing along with the radio and a fellow named Wayne Newton.

Doctor Shane… Darling, Doctor Shane!

Back then, I never really tried to figure out what the songwriter had for the good Doc. Later, I discovered that the words were in the German language.

Dankeschön! Darling, Dankeschön! Thank you for….mmmmmm seein’ me again!

(Now that oldie is stuck in my head.)

One day, while I was mentally rolling the Beekle, or maybe I was Beekling the Dice – it struck me as particularly nonsensical. Beekle the Dice. Really? I quit repeating it and started dissecting it.

My baby said she’s trav’ling on the one after 909
I said move over honey, I’m traveling on that line
I said: Move over once, move over twice
Come on baby don’t Beekle the Dice!

Me, thinking it over, at last: Beekle the Dice? Beekle the Dice?

Mental process: Don’t be stupid. There’s no Beekling in Dice.

Me, ashamed: Come on, Baby! Don’t BE COLD AS ICE.

Mental process: Whew! I had me doubts, laddie.

Me, singing aloud: Come on baby, don’t Beekle the Dice!

Said she’s trav’ling on the one after 909. I realized that train had left the station long before I had my bags packed.

On the other hand, I sometimes overthink things. I drive the speed limit because if I don’t, I’ll get a ticket. I could be on the longest, loneliest, dirt road crossing the Arizona desert and get pulled over if I run it five over the limit. As a result, I get chafed as cars pass me by. (Right. I’m that old fool poking along that everyone has to go around. I just told you I get tickets. I can afford tickets less than I can afford your sour looks as you pass me.)

Overthinking it, I wonder if the folks zipping around me at 45 or 50 in the posted 25 zone also ignore the other laws. I no sooner had that thought this morning, when the person who passed me doing 45 or 50 ran the red light in front of us. (Naturally, I had time to stop…)

From my position – idling there at the crosswalk, I could see the speeder/red-lighter narrowly avoid colliding with commercial van that was executing an illegal grand-mal U-turn mid-block on Main. From speeding to red-light running to U-turns in less than one hundred yards.

I decided burglary and murder were only a-ways down the street, so I turned left on Dallas to avoid the inevitable emergency responders.

If only we had a mass-transit line near the store. I could be travelin’ on the one after 909.

Until then, Don’t Beekle the Dice. Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main Street, BA OK!

Friends, Family, and THINE ENEMY!

May 30, 2013 /

You know what they say about Beauty and the Eye of the Beholder. Right. It’s better than a poke with a sharp stick, as Granny O’Herne used to say.

The other thing was, One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Windstorm Cleanup. She was chock-full of sayings.

They both hold true in the case of an odd book that came in today. On one hand, it is a nondescript little hardback with a simple cloth binding. Old, but not in book-years. As you know, books are the reverse of dogs. That ol’ hound of 10 human-years is said to be 65 or 70 in dog-years. So this book – published some 62 years ago in human years – is really only nine-or-so years of age in book-years. Big Wup.

Here’s the thing, though. As the image of the back of the dustjacket shows, this is a Book Club Edition from London, from a company that claimed in black and white to have nearly a quarter-of-a-million members in its day. But for all those book-club buyers, all these years later, how many do you suppose are still surviving?

Anyone? Anyone?

Nah, you’re wrong. This isn’t the only copy left. Was I implying that?

But it turns out, of all the libraries worldwide, just two copies remain among the holdings – both of them located in Germany (the book is a novel set in Germany, although written in English). Those are First Edition Copies. Of this particular edition – with the dustjacket intact – there are maybe seven copies in the entire world.

Valuable?

Not really. (More than Sarah Palin’s second effort, though. I’ve still got new copies of that one available, if you’re in the market…) It’s that whole Beauty and the Eye thing. Philip Gibbs was a fairly prolific author and this story won no Pulitzers. This copy isn’t as collectible, as a Book Club Edition, even if it came from one of the first book clubs – ever.

You can see in the image (at least, if you click to make it larger) that the address is listed as 121 Charing Cross Road, London. That’s the site of Foyle’s Bookstore, once noted by Guinness World Records as the Biggest Bookstore in the World. (True or not, Foyle’s managed to get certified as such.)

In the UK, teenagers may take a civil service exam to get hired, but brothers William and Gilbert Foyle both failed to score high enough in 1903. To get rid of their textbooks, they took out an ad. They got so many replies that they wound up buying more textbooks to sell, and Foyle’s Bookstore got its start.

They quickly grew to the point they needed larger quarters, and – you guessed it (at least, I’m assuming you did!) – they moved into quarters at 121 Charing Cross Road. They’re still there. Later, in addition to branch locations in London, they had shops in Dublin, Belfast, Cape Town and Johannesburg. In addition to books, they diversified, with a Lecture Agency, an entertainment company, a craft shop, a travel bureau, and publishing house.

That’s where this little copy of THINE ENEMY comes in. It was published by their book club department and shipped out by post to buyers – sometime around 1951. So although it’s only 62 years old (10 in book-years, 403 in dog-years), there just aren’t many remaining.

If I was the grandson or granddaughter of Philip Gibbs, Heck! I’d love to have this little one-owner sitting on my bookshelf. (Disclaimer: Not exactly documented as one-owner, but what the hay?) My Gramps, I’d say proudly, showing it off to my guest.

Guest: Really? He wrote this?

Me: No, but he kept a diary.

Guest: So he mentions buying the book?

Me: Don’t know. The diary has a little lock on it. But that fellow on the dustjacket sort of looks like Gramps.

So you see, a book can be a valuable tie to our ancestry – in this case – if your ancestor happens to be named Gibbs. Philip, specifically. If that’s the case, I’ve got something here you will certainly want to own.

The rest of you can find another treasure to suit – come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main, BA OK!

Photograph: Chris Ware/Getty Images

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