From the Shelves of the Paco Library

Since I didn’t have time to do my regular weekly book review, I’ll just jot down a few ruminations on my recent book-buying expedition in North Carolina.

First, I heartily recommend both the Book Shop in Chapel Hill, and the Reader’s Corner in Raleigh. The former has hundreds of thousands of books, and I have made some splendid finds there over the years. A few years ago, for example, I finally found the second volume - One Million Dead - of José Maria Gironella’s magnificent trilogy of novels about the Spanish Civil War; I had been looking for the thing for over 12 years (I already possessed the first and third volumes). The Reader’s Corner is a much smaller book store, but it’s the kind of place where the bibliophile is likely to experience occasional instances of marvelous serendipity. On my last trip, I found an edition of Boswell’s essays which he had published periodically under the heading of “The Hypochondriak” [sic]. For a collector of 18th century English literature, this was a wonderful discovery. The Reader’s Corner also has some of the most terrific prices on used books (their motto is “Move ‘em out!”).

This time around, I made a very eclectic selection (which, come to think of it, is the way my book-buying trips usually work out). Here is what I bought:

I have read all of the Patrick O’Brian novels featuring Captain Aubrey and Dr. Maturin, but there are several splendid authors out there who produced series pertaining to the age of fighting sail. One of the first, in fact, was Frederick Marryat, who joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman in 1806, eventually rising to become a commander. His own experiences served him well as a novelist, and I have read a couple of his novels with great pleasure. On this trip, I picked up The King’s Own. Another writer in this genre was the late Dudley Pope, who created the Ramage series, highly recommended. I found the second in the series, The Drumbeat. Pope, incidentally, served in the merchant navy during WWII. He was encouraged by C.S. Forester to write fiction, which he did with great success, ultimately publishing 18 novels in the Ramage series. Pope is also the author of The Black Ship, a non-fiction account of the bloodiest mutiny in English history (HMS Hermione, 1797). I have not found this book yet, but am keeping an eye open for it.

A while back, I recommended Ernest Bramah’s Max Carrados stories (featuring a blind detective). A commenter – I can’t remember which one of you, but thanks [Update: It was Mild Colonial Boy] – recommended Bramah’s Kai Lung stories – and I came across a handsome first edition of Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat, which I look forward to reading soon.

I purchased something I’ve been planning on buying for a long time: the Library of America edition of the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. The Memoirs have long been celebrated as one of the finest autobiographies ever produced by a participant in the Civil War, and no library of the period is really complete without it.

I am a Robert Louis Stevenson fan, and was hoping to find a copy of The Dynamiter, the second collection of tales from his New Arabian Nights series; thanks to the Reader’s Corner, I was not disappointed. I found an odd volume from an edition of his collected works that features the entire work (to be completely accurate, it was written by Stevenson in collaboration with his wife, Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson).

Willa Cather is one of my favorite American authors, and her novels have a way of grabbing you from the first page. Especially for those who like to see strong female characters - real feminists who, through sacrifice and hard work, exploit their natural talents to achieve success – Cather’s novels are a pleasure, and a refreshing change of pace from the kind of easily-acquired self-esteem and overarching sense of entitlement that characterizes modern “feminist” writing. Many of her books are set on the frontier - O, Pioneers!, Death Comes for the Archbishop, and (my personal favorite) Shadows on the Rock (late 17th century Quebec) – and her characters, through the hardening implicit in a daily struggle with the elements, develop the fortitude and endurance that serves them well as they pursue their dreams. I found a volume of Cather’s short stories, Youth and the Bright Medusa, which I believe I will enjoy as much as her novels and another book of her short stories that I have read, Obscure Destinies.

I enjoy good escapist fiction from the Victorian and Edwardian eras, and few authors could match H. Ryder Haggard in the range of his imagination, and in his excellent plotting. I picked up The Yellow God on this trip.

The most frustrating thing about P.G. Wodehouse is the sheer extent of his body of work. I purchased A Damsel in Distress and Something New, and damned if I didn’t get home and find that I already have them (which means that I have already read them). At least Damsel represents something of an upgrade; it is a first American edition. The Wodehouse collector also needs to bear in mind that many of his books were published under different titles in the UK and the United States (Something New turns out to be the American edition of Something Fresh; I shoulda known!).

For those who might be tempted to ask, “why don’t you order some of these old books you’re looking for online?”, my response is, I’m afraid, not entirely rational, but, I hope, understandable. To me, searching for that long-desired but elusive volume is part of the thrill of the chase. For example, with respect to the aforementioned novel by Gironella, I could probably have found it online (or, predating the wide use of the internet, through a search service), but there is nothing to compare with the excitement of discovering the thing, at long last, on the bookshelf – on the very same bookshelf where I had looked in vain for more than a decade. I suppose, as I get older, I will finally succumb to the relentless efficiency of the internet, at least in some cases (After all, who knows? I may not have another 12 years to find Wodehouse’s The White Feather, or the Sixth Series of Menken’s Prejudices).