Not likely to be the 'Last' for us

Third on our stop in Northampton during our 48-hour stay was Gabriel Books, on Market St. Tucked among various antique shops, Gabriel had been recommended on our visit to Old Book Store on the other end of downtown.

We've already posted perhaps our best find at Gabriel Books on this visit, this sweet bumper sticker. It's not that we didn't find books to add to our collection. But whether it was because of spending fatigue after visiting Old Book Store and Raven Used Books, or if it was just plain old physical fatigue after carting around a bag full of books from those two stores, we only left Gabriel Books with one new item. Yet another copy of James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, our second on that day alone!

Much like Deborah with Pride and Prejudice, I often can't resist picking up a new copy of a "Leatherstocking Tale" whenever I find one. But sometimes I can resist. Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the visit to Gabriel Books on this day was getting a chance to check out an N.C. Wyeth-illustrated edition of Cooper's The Deerslayer. Very cool, and in really good condition for being such an early copy of this particular edition (not a 1925 first edition, I don't think, but not far off). But at $150, it was too rich for our blood.

Still worth getting a look at, all the same.

Book added: The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap

Years: 1940

Where obtained: Gabriel Books

Price: $4.00

We will not forget to return to Popeks

One website we discovered while creating Get a Spine is called "Forgotten Bookmarks." We had had a similar idea to have a series on Get a Spine to tell about the various items we find inside of the books we acquire, and we call that series "Left in the Leaves," but Forgotten Bookmarks is the gold standard by which our idea had to be measured ... and honestly, we might not even win the bronze in comparison.

It's a great site, very well done, and almost always has a fun/interesting post about something found inside the pages of a used book.

While preparing Get a Spine for launch and digging a little bit deeper on Forgotten Bookmarks, I discovered that the site was run by the same person who owns a used-book store about 20 miles from where I grew up in Central New York. So that bookstore, Popeks Books, quickly became a must-visit on our trip to the Northeast, and Tuesday we had our first opportunity to check it out.

We were fortunate to meet the bookstore's extremely nice owner, Michael, and talk to him a little bit about his bookstore and how he got into the book business. We hope that we'll have a Spine Nine from Michael to share soon, but suffice it to say for now that the origin of Popeks Books is one of the better stories we've heard about people getting into the used-book business.

The short version is that there was an auction about 30 years ago, and at this auction was a van that was on the block for $100... but there was one catch. It was full of used books. The Popek family wanted the van, got the books with it, and then needed to do something with them, so...

As it also turns out, Michael's cousins were high school acquaintances of mine, one being a couple of years older and the other being in my class of 95 people. Small world.

Once again, our daughter's napping schedule meant this visit would be fairly brief, but to be honest, there's so much at Popeks Books that we'd need a good couple of hours to feel like we gave the bookstore the attention it requires. So we'll definitely be back, though we did score a few items on this visit:

• Deborah found, on the 50-cent rack, an interesting amalgamation of Natty Bumppo's life throughout James Fenimore Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales." It's called The Leatherstockig Saga, and it takes all of the parts throughout the five books that specifically pertain to Deerslayer/Hawkeye/Pathfinder/Leatherstocking and puts them together in the chronological order of his life (which is not the way the books were first published in their day) to trace the path of his life throughout the five novels. I don't usually like abridged versions of anything, but I have to say that I am pretty interested to check this one out sometime.
• another Riverside to add to the collection! Joseph Andrews  by Henry Fielding. 
• a Modern Library double-William Faulkner collection, containing the novels The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying. I've once sat on the town square in Oxford, Mississippi reading some Faulkner, so I am kind of excited about this find. 
• last, but definitely not least, we added two John Steinbeck works, one being an upgrade over a high school-era copy of Of Mice and Men, the other being our first copy of The Grapes of Wrath. Both are in great shape, with the copy of Of Mice and Men being a second-printing done in the work's original year of publication, 1937. There is the number "200" stamped on the inside of the back cover,  but it's hard to tell if this means anything as far as determining the origin of the printing. Regardless, it is an excellent find, and I can't imagine we're likely to come across a better version of this classic that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. The edition of Grapes is also excellent, it's an 11th printing, done in 1940, one year after the work was first published. It's missing its dust jacket, but the cloth cover has an interesting illustration of the migration during the Dust Bowl. I've never read Grapes, but as a fan of Mice and The Pearl, reading Steinbeck's epic has been high on my list for quite some time, so I am excited about this find.

Score one for Popeks Books, and consider us always interested in coming back anytime we are in the area.

Books added: Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding; The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner; The Leatherstocking Saga edited by Allan Nevins; Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Publishers (in same order): Houghton Mifflin Riverside Editions; Random House Modern Library; Avon; Covici Friede; Viking Press

Years: 1961; 1946; 1982; 1937; 1940

Where obtained: Popeks Books

Price: $18.00 for the five

Sometimes no plan is the best plan

Our first stop on our trip to Central New York wasn't a planned one. On Tuesday, we were in Oneonta, NY -- home to Hartwick College, the State University of New York at Oneonta, and the James Fenimore Cooper Society, as well as being the former home of the National Soccer Hall of Fame -- to have a little lunch before hitting a bookstore we had planned to visit.

But our parking spot in downtown Oneonta just happened to be in front of a bookstore called "The Rose and Laurel Bookshop." So after a bite to eat, we hit The Rose and Laurel before hitting our known destination.

While our daughter latched on pretty quickly to a Steinbeck novel, Deborah and I collected seven works to take home with us. One of them Deborah talks more about here, while the other six were a random collection chosen for different reasons:

• Eichenberg! As we've mentioned many times, we have started to be on the lookout for Fritz Eichenberg-illustrated/wood-engraved works, and we found an awesome copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, which is an all-time favorite. This edition appears to date from about 1940 or so.
• a visually striking and well-preserved 1887 edition of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, with "an introductory account of the work by the author."
• another Riverside Edition for our collection, A Modern Instance by William Howells, published in 1957.
• a 1950 Modern Library edition of Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, which is a definite upgrade over our current copy. I've not read Brothers yet, but I am definitely looking forward to reading more Dostoyevsky.
• George Orwell's Animal Farm, another personal favorite, likely a book club hardcover edition from 1946, the year after it first appeared in print.
• A copy of David James Duncan's The River Why, which Deborah picked up in order to return a loaned copy back to the person who gave it to her.

So, all in all, this was a very successful stop that we hadn't planned on making. Count us as fans of The Rose and Laurel Bookshop!

Books added: Crime and Punishment  by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe; A Modern Instance by William D. Howells; The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Animal Farm by George Orwell; The River Why by David James Duncan

Publishers (in same order): The Heritage Press; Houghton, Mifflin and Company; Houghton Mifflin Company Riverside Editions; Random House Modern Library; Harcourt, Brace and Company; Bantam Books 

Years: 1940(?); 1887; 1957; 1950; 1946; 1984

Where obtained: The Rose and Laurel Bookshop

Price: $30.00 for the six

Books for every variety of taste and opinion

We had big plans for this Saturday morning. A leisurely trip to our farm for some fresh veggies, then off to the SPCA Rummage store! The first Saturday of the month their books are half-price (regularly $3 hardcovers, $1 paperbacks) and we've been meaning to hit up the sale for awhile now, but kept missing it. Well, a few exciting home improvement projects and an eight-month-old who refused to nap without her mama meant we got a much later start than we had planned, which in turn meant I was hitting up the sale solo (with the baby) since Kristian had to work this afternoon.

We've been to the Rummage store many times -- it is a great thrift store all around -- but I had never really checked out the book section before. There was a small classics shelf with a mix of paperback and hardcover. On first scan, I didn't see much to get excited about, but as I examined more closely -- in between picking up dropped toys -- I came away with a few pretty good ones. On a prior visit, Kristian saw that they had the same 1964 paperback edition of The Awakening that we have, only without the sun-bleached cover, so that came home with me today. In addition to that, I found a funky paperback copy of Death in Venice by Thomas Mann that I liked, and a 1953 hardcover edition of The Magic Mountain, also by Thomas Mann -- nothing super special about it, but I've been wanting to read it and for $1.50 I figured, why not?

I also came home with a small hardcover Modern Library of "The Collected Stories of Dorothy Parker". But what I was most excited about was the copy of "The Best Known Novels of George Elliot" -- those being, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, and Romola. A big book, published in 1940, it is a Modern Library Giant. The dust jacket is in pretty rough shape, but it is one of the best parts about this book. The inside of the jacket has a complete list (as of 1940, that is) of titles in the Modern Library and also seems to be the marketing medium. Printed across the top of the list it reads, "Which of these 334 outstanding books do you want to read?" And along the side is printed "Books that appeal to every variety of taste and opinion".

Books added: The Awakening, Kate Chopin (1964); Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories, Thomas Mann (1964); The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann (1953); "Collected Stories of Dorothy Parker," Dorothy Parker (1942); "The Best Known Novels of George Elliot," George Elliot (1940)

Publishers (in same order):  Capricorn Books; Random House, Vintage Books; Alfred A. Knopf; Random House, The Modern Library, Random House, The Modern Library

Years: see above

Where obtained: SPCA Rummage Store, Charlottesville, VA

Price: $5.50