Family and friends have been known to suggest that too much of my budget goes to buying books. In response, I now have proof that my purchasing habits are frugal, nay, abstemious.
ABE Books, an electronic bazaar of second-hand book dealers, has listed its most expensive sales in 2008. Topping all is $17,216 paid for Etudes à l'Eau-Forte,
A collection of 25 etchings by Seymour Hayden – 24 of the plates depict the landscape around London, the Thames, Ireland and Wales and the final one is a portrait of Thomas Haden. The text reproduces an article printed in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts by Philippe Burty and contains a catalogue of the etched work of Seymour Haden.
That cost more than I spend in, er, months and months.
Another fine art book (eight years of the 19th Century Journal Arabe Illustre) was in second place. Okay, collectors pay a lot for rare prints, and I might too if TARP would bail me out to the tune of a billion or so. But what was the next priciest item?
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban!
Let it be a “Rare first edition signed by JK with the dust wrapper panels signed by the cover artist Cliff Wright”, identifiable as part of the very first printing by “a misaligned block of text which was corrected in the subsequent issues” – it ain’t worth $12,874 to anyone rational enough to have that much money in his bank account. I presume that high-level espionage, secret codes and the Fate of the Nation are involved.
It is, on the other hand, pleasing to see than number one in the “Science Fiction and Fantasy” category was a first edition of Out of the Silent Planet ($7,950). I must confess, though, that I had never heard of the runner-up, the English YA fantasy series The Edge Chronicles ($7,000). LibraryThing’s new “Will You Like It?” feature is highly confident that I won’t, but the readers’ reviews lead me to wonder,
A fantastic tale of fantastic lands at the edge of the world, where certain rocks float in the air and the feared Deepwoods are crowded with extraordinary trees and creatures. Young teen, Twig, has been raised by woodtrolls but learns his destiny lies elsewhere. he wanders off through the Deepwoods to find them teeming with unheard of horrors, unexpected friends, comic menaces, enslavement as a pet, his true parentage, and the nature of his feared nemesis the Gloamglozer. There are sky pirates, smelly halitoads, hover worms, slaughterers, hammelhorns, caterbirds, skullpelts, bloodoaks, gyle goblins and their Grossmother, spindlebugs, milchgrubs, banderbears, wig-wigs resembling carnivorous tribbles, the very disgusting rotsucker, and many more fascination characters and adventures.
How can I pass up carnivorous tribbles? But if I don’t, I promise my heirs that I’ll find a copy for less than seven grand!
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