It's time for a book thread

Schizoid market, but it looks now like we may get that new high after all, after which the waves will tell us if it is the ultimate one.  We will pray this can end quickly with a sharp spike instead of weeks trapped in some tedious ending-diagonal pattern.  Let's give Bryan Franco credit for now for his historical model that demands one more all-time high for the chart gods to be satisfied.

So what's new on the bookshelf?

Well, I found this 1956 Mencken collection at the Ballard Goodwill.

H.L. Mencken, A Carnival of Buncombe, Johns Hopkins 1956

And A. N. Wilson's book on the decline of Britain, at Value Village.

A.N. Wilson, After the Victorians: The Decline of Britain
in the World, FSG 2005

I've been picking up solid book club science fiction published by Nelson Doubleday, like these.

Harry Harrison, The Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat, et al,
Nelson Doubleday, early 1980s

Anthony Boucher, ed., A Treasury of Great Science Fiction,
Nelson Doubleday, 1959

I'll buy Nelson Doubleday sci-fi books all day long.

Mark Anderson's shop in Ballard is now my favorite bookshop in Seattle.  If you're in the area, stop in on a Saturday and spend some time in his stacks.  Here's what I have got from him lately.

J.R.R. Tolkien, Rings trilogy, Houghton-Mifflin, 1965 revised ed

I upgraded my old boxed set of Tolkien to one with dust jackets -- for $45.  Such a deal on the set!

Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds In Collision, Macmillan, 1950 1st ed

Velikovsky is crackpot science, but it holds a special place in my heart due to the 1978 release of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", one of my favorite cult films.

I also picked this up from Anderson's, Naipaul's account of his first visit to India.

V.S. Naipal, An Area of Darkness, Reprint Society London, 1966

This will go well with this other Naipaul I found at the Value Village over on Lake City Way in Seattle:

V.S. Naipaul, India: A Million Mutinies Now (signed), Viking 1990

This one is signed, from 1991, and worth at least $50.  Who gives a signed book away?

Here's another signed book, James Howard Kunstler's latest from the World Made By Hand series.  I've been a real putz not to get to this just yet.  Soon, very soon.  The story may go well with Kondratieff winter.

James Howard Kunstler, A History of the Future (signed),
Atlantic Monthly Press 2014

A book from my local Value Village.  All you need to know about the French existentialists is that Sartre was a salon commie piece of shit, and that Camus was the real deal, and a very good guy.

Olivier Todd, Albert Camus: A Life, Knopf 1997

A clean, crisp edition of a Northwest mountaineering bible:

Manning ed, Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills,
Mountaineers Press, 1967 2nd ed

I wanted my daughter to read "To Build A Fire", so I picked up this fine edition of Jack London from AbeBooks.com last week.  I wish more books were published with such care as this.

Jack London, The Bodley Head Jack London, Bodley Head, 1968

When she's a little older, I'll get her into Fritz Leiber.  Stacks of paperbacks will help.

Fritz Leiber assorted paperbacks, hells yeah!

And here are a few books from Robert D. Kaplan.  I really like his work, and have just about all of his books.

Robert D. Kaplan miscellany

Of course, this has all been leading up to something, a very special book I found, heavily discounted, from the closing sale at Wessel & Lieberman Books (R.I.P.) in Pioneer Square, Seattle.  I walked out with one of their gems, on the relative-cheap.

J.H. Speke, Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile,
William Blackwood & Sons, 1864 2nd ed

Speke, Source of the Nile

A fine copy of a rare book, and one actually worth reading.  Now I just need to get more and better Sir Richard Burton to match.

Anderson's Books has even got a set of Captain Cook's journals, pretty badass, and waaaay too rich for this collector.

It looks like I'll have plenty to keep me busy when the fall rains arrive.

Chart 07-08: Gott mit uns

The mighty German victory today in the World Cup semifinal actually foreshadows the future of the BRICs -- sneaky how the financiers pull this off -- but tonight we can cheer them for a fine show of sport.  I'd like to see them face their neighbors, those serious guys in orange.

It's all a clever dress rehearsal for the end of the USA-UK financial domination of the ROW, a long cycle that has run its course.

We wish both the Germans and the Dutch well in the days ahead.

Last week I made a final visit to Wessel & Lieberman books in Pioneer Square to pick up the ed of Rousseau I have had on my mind for a long time.  It's gorgeous of course, and now safe here with me.

J-J Rousseau Confessions, 1928 Brentano ed, tr. Mallory 

They are shutting down and are liquidating the remaining books, including their online store.  They will be missed.

I found a particularly nice solid wood bookcase at the Value Village thrift store in my neighborhood, a real score for a mere $20.  A $3 coupon from an item donation made it even cheaper.  I stocked it with a slew of good children's books, particularly heavy in the Grosset & Dunlap.

Children's library of classics and sci-fi

This is part of a much larger library of books to get my kids through their teenage years.  They are just now starting to understand how this is theirs to explore and enjoy, what a fine thing it is to be surrounded by books.  They get it.

In the markets, at this point we are just on-hold, waiting for the Bradley model turn date next week.  The current channel in SPX should take us up somewhere between 1990 and 2000 -- they simply have to take a shot at it, right?

SPX 07-08

There are plenty of data out next week, including (for what it's worth) Chinese GDP and industrial data, and, of course, U.S. earnings soon.

I'm still on-board for the "double-nested Three Peaks and a Domed House" model.  One theory I am proposing with these charts is that -- finally -- FOMC releases may start being profoundly market-negative events, as continued tapering and eventually a rate hike (April 2015?) do their work.

SPX 07-08 1Y

After January, a relief rally into the end of April.

SPX 07-08 5Y

UVXY bottoms around $20 next week?

UVXY 07-08 6M

Nothing much to do IMO until we are closer to the turn, complete a wave up, and maybe even make that low on the VIX and her ETFs.

Thank you, Wessel & Lieberman

Sad, sad news today as Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers, here in Seattle for 22 years, announced via their customer email list that they are closing down their business and liquidating their stock.

This is a huge loss for bibliophiles in the Pacific Northwest, as Wessel & Lieberman is probably our finest storefront bookshop, a real Seattle institution.  They are especially strong in PNW books, natural history, mountaineering books, and all sorts of 19th Century arcana.

They simply have no lousy books, none at all.  Everything is worth seeing, reading, and owning.

They promise to be open at their store in Pioneer Square through June, so I will make numerous forays over my lunch hour down to see them.  They have a copy of Rousseau's Confessions I need to snag, and definitely a few more, once I sort through the stacks slowly and methodically.

I can't think of any better way to say "thank you" for their very existence, than to post the best I can remember of what I have bought from them over the years.  This list is not complete -- I know I'm overlooking a lot of pulp here.

See them before they are gone ... Thank you so much, Mark Wessel and Michael Lieberman.

Edmund Burke, Conciliation with the Colonies, Allyn & Bacon, 1920  

Robert L. Wood, Trail Country: Olympic National Park
(signed 1st ed), Mountaineers, 1968 

Oswald Spengler, Man and Technics (1st ed), Knopf, 1932 

alberto giacometti, Museum of Modern Art, 1965

Robert L. Wood, Men, Mules and Mountains: Lieutenant O'Neill's 
Olympic Expeditions (signed 1st ed), Mountaineers, 1976

John McPhee, La Place de la Concorde Suisse (1st ed), FSG, 1984

Alan Moorehead, A Late Education (1st US ed), Harper & Row, 1970

Robert L. Wood, Across the Olympic Mountains, the Press Expedition, 1889-90 
(signed 1st ed), Univ. of Washington Press, 1967

Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle, Lippincott

Ben Franklin, Autobiography, Modern Library, 1944

H. L. Mencken, A Book of Burlesques, Knopf, 1925

H. L. Mencken, Christmas Story (1st ed), Knopf, 1946

George Orwell, Animal Farm (1st US ed), Harcourt Brace & Co, 1946 

M. Cléry,  A Journal of The Terror, The Folio Society, 1955

William H. McNeill, Hutchins' University: A Memoir of the
University of Chicago, 1929-1950, Chicago, 1991