Book haul for July 2023

We start up where we left off last month at Bell, Book and Comic. My first go in the place was last month. They have a small room of paperbacks but as we all know, you can fit a bunch of paperbacks in a small space. I initially grabbed all I allotted myself to spend, waited two weeks and went back for the rest. It’s kind of nice going to a place where they have plenty and you can look at everything thoroughly in one trip. I always ask if there are more books and each time they tell me they have 6 boxes to be priced and shelved, they’re just waiting for more room. Well, fellas, I bought a ton in the past few weeks, let’s get them shelves filled. I’m dying to see what’s next!

As stated in the previous book haul post Bell, Book and Comic has very affordable prices. There are a few that are more than a couple bucks though. Like this 1940’s Pocket Book copy of Dracula. Yeah, it’s beat up but look at that thing! It’s beautiful.

We got more nature disaster in The Last Hope of Earth. The Greatest Adventure (which all I can think of is the song from the Hobbit now) looks amazing. Just look at that Brontosaurus with long jagged teeth. Jurassic Park, eat your heart out. I’m almost finished reading this one so review will be coming soon!

Ice & Iron- naked guys falling from the sky. A copy of Raiders novelization with a silver reflective cover.

Four more Laser Books.

Aurther Machen is another author I hadn’t heard of in this HP Lovecraft-quote-on-the-cover Ballantine Books series. You ever see something and just know it would be a mistake to not pick it up even though you have no idea what it is? Like later on you’ll find out about it and regret not grabbing it when you had the chance. Also got Jerry Sohl, The Altered Ego. I love stories that are set in the future from the past. We’re closer to 2045 than we are to the 1950’s which is when this was written.

I love the look on this Alistair MacLean, The Satan Bug book. Very 70ish. I picked up the Godsfire because of the catness. There is actually quite a bit of cat books this month. I didn’t realize it until writing this up. Also, it didn’t escape me that the author’s last name is one letter off from Feline. HA

Got a couple Horror short story collections. My wife said the monster on the Tandem one looks like a big vagina. And now I can’t stop seeing it.

The Night Walk and To Walk the Night. To be fair it is a lot cooler at night for a stroll. Ba dum bum!

Two Edgar Rice Burroughs horror books. I started that Monster Men book but was bored by it. It was very Island of Dr Moreau and I’ve already read it and wasn’t too excited to read it again. That chained up bear on the Oakdale Affair is calling my name though.

Got a Lumley doing Lovecraft and unrelated a nutbag William W Johnstone all American Rig Warrior. Looks ridiculously fun.

Sunbird looks to be some nazi occult type adventure and that Silverberg has mad Aztec vibes going on.

Here’s two that are a little different in style for me. One is the Vietnam war fiction and the other is Navy fiction. Don’t know anything about either of them but I believe the Sailor one has a mystery element.

Two more Jack Williamsons. I own a later copy of Darker that you Think but couldn’t pass up this first printing of the 1963 edition. The Reign of Wizardry is in old people font, and I love it.

Speaking of books I already had but wanted another copy, Manly Wade Wellman’s Twice in Time. My first copy is much older and in a state of almost non-readable brittle. The Hamelin Plague looks to be a horror novel involving rats and a new plague.

Like every other fantasy book collector, I’m a sucker for anything looking Frazetta-like and sounding like Robert E Howard.

Next stop for the month is The Bookery in Fairborn Ohio. They have a great small selection of paperbacks, and this is where I find a lot of my Fawcett Gold Medals. I had never heard of Steve Dodge but as previously stated, if it’s a “Oriental” based crime book from the era, it’s coming home with me. I’ve never read a Bruno Fischer but heard of him from the Paperback Warrior Podcast.

Got some even older crime novels. I love how on the cover of It’s a Crime it says, “My gun-butt smashed his skull!” and then the art reflects it. Ha! The John Dickson Carr had a Shadow/creepy doll vibe cover that really drew me in.

They got in the first ten or so Lasers in amazing condition. I picked up one, two and three.

I also picked up Young Man with a Horn by Dorothy Baker which I reviewed a couple posts back. It’s a pulpy jazz centered novel and it’s great. The author is interesting, and I even did a little research on that review. And then I posted it on the Vintage Paperback and Pulp Forum group on Facebook and a bunch of people preceded to tell me all the things in the comments that I wrote in the review meaning they didn’t read it which made me feel totally shitty. So, thanks guys! Ha!

Up next we went downtown to the convention center for the Gem City Comic Con. It was so much fun! I had never been to a Comic Con before because I don’t really care about new superhero stuff and I assumed that’s what it would be. Boy, was I wrong. There was tons of old shit. Golden Age comics and pre-code horror that I had only seen pictures of online. In fact, most people were selling older items. We picked up a bunch of 60’s/70’s horror comics and a couple pre-codes. They were really expensive, so we opted for the beat-up copies. This isn’t a comic blog though so let’s get to the paperbacks we found…

First off, I was very excited to actually find some Modesty Blaise books out in the wild. There was a bunch but there were lots of other items to spend money on also, so I just grabbed the first two in the series.

And then holy shit, look at that, two Cherry Delight books! This was all they had but if there were more, I would have charged it and worried about paying it later. I already reviewed Silverfinger, which is a couple posts back. It’s been the most popular review on the site because, duh, sex sells.

Finally found another Robert Dietrich book. Terrible guy, great writer. I don’t usually over-pay for books, but I really wanted this and plopped down the $20 for it. Oof. I don’t think it’s worth that much but ever since The Calypso Caper, I’ve been wanting to read more of his books and haven’t been able to find any. It is in really great condition though. I doubt it’s ever even been opened. Speaking of Calypso Caper, I found another old crime book with a calypso theme that I couldn’t pass up. I love a Caribbean setting.

More flower girls please. My favorite cover art of this haul belongs to Not Too Narrow…Not Too Deep by Richard Sale. This is also another one I just recently reviewed. Wow, I am really behind on this book haul post if there are that many already reviewed books here.

Not a lot of horror but they had these two Frankenstein Horror Series novels, The Marrow Eaters and Seven Tickets to Hell. Just look at those beautiful covers! Oh damn, just noticed that beard/cat/wife? hair in Seven Tickets. Oh well, I don’t feel like redoing it.

Also grabbed an HP edition of a series we collect but didn’t have and a book about movie monsters called, Super-Monsters.

Though I wasn’t really in the mood to scour through the garbage, my wife wanted to hit up the Goodwill Outlet, so we went. I hadn’t been having too much luck there lately and this time was no different. I found nothing so I went to hunt down my wife to see if she was anywhere near ready to go and lo and behold, she’s holding a giant stack of books. Most if it was so/so but there were some interesting sci-fi titles.

The best being the Gordon R Dickson Mutants and Andre Norton, Android at Arms.

She got this Far-Seer because she thought the cover was funny. Which, it is. A pretty cool non-fiction book about ESP.

Greenmagic has some kind of wolf/bear/crab/man on the cover. That’s funny. Some unicorn action on The Warlock is Missing.

I love how space-sci-fi stereotype these two look. Especially The Trophy. It’s so perfect it’s almost a parody.

We’ve got three boobs on the Windhover Tapes and a Gordon R Dickson, Stranger.

Some more catness on the Cingulum and the Voyaging. I find the Cingulum kind of intriguing. Might have to put that in the coming up pile.

Always happy to get more Jack Williamson especially ones with Star Trek type monsters on the cover. We got a little historical fiction time travel with The Other Time.

What can I say about this cat cover?? Oh my god. Cats with human tits and thumbs. And another Gordon R Dickson. Meh, this one will probably go into the trade pile.

Last up is the Half-Priced Books haul. We can’t go one month without checking in to see if there have been any updates and this go around there was a ton of gold. I just went yesterday, and it was a letdown but hey what are you going to do.

We snagged a few horror books including this bee attack book, The Swarm and Save the Last Dance by Judi Miller. I read her book, Phantom of the Soap Opera which was as cheesy as it sounds but fun, nonetheless. I reviewed it but it was back when I was doing everything on Instagram so maybe I’ll have to pull that up, retype it and polish it up here.

How excited was I to find an actual book from the wantlist? Jaws mother fucking 4, The Revenge. Legend in bad shark movies. Super good. Was also happy to get some more 80’s thriller with Dark Fields. No one ever talks about the beauty of the 80’s thriller. Maybe that’s a good thing though. You can get them all for nothing. Let’s keep it that way, eh?

I started following the Instagram account, Vintage Nurse Romance Novels and though I’ll probably never actually read this (maybe? Who knows?) I wanted to pick up this classic nurse paperback, A Nurse Comes Home and it was only a couple bucks. Doubling down on the purple we have this prison escape novel, The Wooden Horse. I believe it’s a World War 2 prison story but it’s not sitting in front of me at the moment so don’t hold me to it.

If it’s cheap and has Rod Serling’s name on it, we usually grab it. This one is a collection of short stories compiled by him. I thought it was written by him, but I didn’t look that closely when I was in the store. I might not have picked it up had I known. Oh well.

Very very excited to find more James Bond PANs. Not just any James Bond but my two favorite (of the movies anyway) Thunderball and From Russia with Love.

Also got Dr. No. My third favorite. I just reviewed this one also. Spoiler alert, it is not a huge pile of shit. If you get it, you get it. Some more Gold Medal goodness with another writer I learned about on the Paperback Warrior Podcast, Wade Miller.

After being unimpressed with my first Travis McGee novel I thought I might take it back even further with an early John D MacDonald book, Border Town Girl. Seems to be sleezy noir with a Mexican-ish setting. I love Mexican things. Fog Hides the Fury attracted me by its ghostly gothicness and large type font.

Even more cat love with this HP Ballantine edition of The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. And man, I love the cover for this “Carter Dickson” mystery novel. It just looks so classic spooky mystery. Kind of gothic even.

Two super beat-up copies of MacDonald’s, Travis McGee series. I think The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper has the best cover of any of the series…that I’ve seen so far.

While researching the last Maigret book I reviewed I stumbled upon a third Jean Gabin, Maigret movie that I didn’t know existed wherein Maigret is in New York going against the mob. Whaaaat?? And then as these things happen, the very next bookstore I go to there is a copy of the book. And to unclass the joint up a little I got this Richard Blade series book that is a couple inches away from being a porn novel.

Some non-fiction-ish book in Jadoo. It’s based on real events but written in a fictional way. Wrapped for Eternity is a true non-fiction book about Mummies. The wife loves Mummies.

And that’s it. I hope you enjoyed the new way I laid out the book haul. I recently bought a scanner so I thought it would be more fun to have the pictures be bigger since they look better and hopefully it wasn’t too boring with my thoughts being on every book. This haul is almost a month late and we didn’t really buy too many this month so I might skip the August haul. I don’t know, we’ll see.