Books: some recent acquisitions

All of this waiting on events this week, enduring the wave 4 (on my count) doldrums, is tedious and tiring.  The good news is, I discovered an excellent bookshop in in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, and braved the heavy rain today so I could raid the place.

Anderson's Books of Seattle is located just off Market Street, around the corner from where my family likes to get good pho now and then.  It's a small shop, doing a lot of internet business, but the selection on hand was outstanding and very nicely priced.

First, I found a really slick Heritage Press edition of Brave New World, in an orange binding and with a slipcover:

Aldous Huxley, 1974 Heritage Press ed.

Anderson's has a ton of these Heritage Press editions of various books, bought from someone who collected them for a very long time and took good care of them.  Here's another, Suetonius The Lives of the Twelve Caesars:

Suetonius, 1965 Heritage Press ed.

I found a hardcover of Richmond Lattimore's translation of the Odyssey.  His Iliad was a staple of my youth.

Odyssey, Lattimore trans, 1979 printing

And, to finish up the classics, a nice clean copy of Bury:

J.M. Bury History of Greece, 3rd ed., 1959

An Oxford Press edition of Jeremy Bentham's Fragment on Government, to join my general library of English political philosophy.

Jeremy Bentham, Fragment on Government, Oxford, 1951 printing

A general history of Latin America, published by Knopf:

Herring, A History of Latin America

And, lastly, a clean copy of that very strange book Tom Wolfe wrote so many years ago.  I love Tom Wolfe.  Also, I love Tom Wolfe.  Lastly, I love Tom Wolfe.

Tom Wolfe, In Our Time, 1980

The literature and history section is especially strong, and I am eagerly planning another raid.  He has an old Rodale copy of Farmers of 40 Centuries, which I would have nabbed if I didn't already have one.  There's a bunch of Theodore Dreiser and some Solzhenitsyn I'm going to plunder, too, like a fiend.

If you live near Seattle and you appreciate good books, visit this bookshop soon, it's easily in my top three list in the city now.

I also had a good visit to Wessel & Lieberman in Pioneer Square recently.  Here's what I found.

I'm a big fan of John McPhee's nonfiction writing on the world.  Here is his book about the Swiss and the Swiss Army (the Swiss themselves).  I continue to accumulate his books when I can, as they are always good reads.

John McPhee, La Place de la Concorde Suisse

Then I found these gems, a couple of signed first-editions.  The late Jim Sanford was once president of the Mountaineers club of Seattle, and trail guide author Robert L. Wood signed them nicely for him.

The books detail two of the pioneering expeditions into the Olympic Mountains here in the 1890s.  In addition to his legendary trail guides, Robert L. Wood has also compiled the histories of these exploits.

Robert L. Wood, Men, Mules and Mountains, 1st ed.

I had already read his book on the Press Expedition, the story of which is funny as hell and very well-told here.  Setting out in the dead of winter, they get seriously off course in the Goldie drainage (a box canyon), and hilarity ensues.

Robert L. Wood, Across the Olympic Mountains:The Press Expedition, 1889-90, 1st ed.

Heck, even Goodwill has been good to me lately.  I found this spotless copy of the first three books about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in Lankhmar, Fritz Leiber goodness:

Fritz Leiber, The Three of Swords

Re the markets, we really could get banged up Monday, perhaps even dropping down to 1660 SPX, the mid-Bollinger on the weekly.  It won't stick, however, because they'll work out something, and trigger the final rally I've been expecting for forever now.

We need the blow-off top soon, to cap the rally since 2009 and welcome a fresh and friendly Bear market to the scene.