We’re pleased to offer our customers free gift wrapping this holiday season. Please just ask for your gift wrapping as you check out. If the store is extremely busy, we may ask if you mind returning for your gift-wrapped parcels the next day.
We would also love to help you pick out the perfect gift for anyone on your list. Just tell us a little bit about the person and we’ll give you several suggestions to consider.
Don’t be put off by the cover art: Lord of the Fading Lands by C.L. Wilson is one of the best romantic fantasies I’ve read this year and a stunning debut.
Ellysetta, raised in the mortal land of Celieria, has been fascinated by the Fey her entire life. She is part of the crowd gathered to view Rain Tairen Soul, King of the Fey and the legendary figure who “scorched the world” with grief-stricken madness a thousand years ago. When Ellysetta is knocked down and nearly trampled by the crowd, her mind calls out unknowingly to her truemate for protection. That soulmate turns out to be Rain. Overwhelmed by the turn of events, Ellysetta does not immediately accept Rain as her truemate. Rain must court her against a background of political turmoil as the Fey’s old enemy, the Eld, begin to stir even as the Fey are weakening as a race.
Wilson originally wrote Lord of the Fading Lands and its sequel, Lady of Light and Shadows, as one long novel so be prepared for the abrupt end to the first book and have the second near at hand.
Check for availability of C.L. Wilson novels at Fiction Addiction.
For the 3rd year, James Patterson has pledged $250,000 in prize money for the James Patterson PageTurner Awards. The awards are open to US and Canadian residents and are intended to celebrate those people, companies, schools and other institutions who find original and effective ways to spread the excitement of books and reading. The deadline for nominations is December 9th, 2007.
When book collectors and booksellers say “first edition,” this is usually meant as shorthand for “first printing of the first edition”. Collectors usually prefer to own the first printing of a book and thus that printing can be worth much, much more than a second, or later printing. So, when I price a book it is often crucial to determine whether that book is a first printing.
Determining the printing can be easy or extremely difficult. To give you an example of how one might go about it, I’ll talk about a recent acquisition: a hardcover copy of Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. It had a price of $24.95 on the dust jacket flap, indicating that it was not a bookclub edition.
The copyright page said “First Edition”, which was promising, and had a number line ending in 2. Number lines are a recent publishing phenomenon meant to indicate printings. Usually a First Edition will have a number line ranging from 1 to 10, though the numbers can be increasing, decreasing, or alternate from side to side. Until recently, Random House was the exception. Their first printings said “First Edition” and had a number line ending in 2. Their 2nd printing had a number line ending in 2, but did not say “First Edition”. (Several years ago they changed this policy and now put a 1 at the end like everyone else.)
The publisher of Choke, per the copyright page, was “Doubleday, an imprint of Random House.” So, did the Random House rule apply or not? (For those who believe this rule only applies to Random House books and not imprints, note that Villard Books follows the Random House ‘2′ rule.)
First, I turned to my reference book First Editions: A Guide to Identification by Edward Zempel and Linda Verkler. They had a listing for Doubleday (a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc.) that said “The words First Edition are indicated on the copyright page. On subsequent printings this is removed and the print history line indicating the current printing is added.” This info didn’t help me much since even if a “print history line” is the same as a number line they implied that I shouldn’t see both it and the slug “First Edition”. Since my copy of First Editions is the 3rd edition published in 1995 (before Random House bought Bantam Doubleday Dell) and Choke was published in 2001, I decided I couldn’t rely on Zempel and Verkler and needed to do more research.
Next, I turned to www.abebooks.com. I did an advanced search for a hardcover, first edition copy of Choke by Palahniuk and sorted from highest price to lowest. Currently, there is a signed copy listing for $229.00 whose description states “The ‘1′ is in the number line on the copyright page. The $24.95 price is intact on the jacket.” This indicates that the first printing should indeed have a 1 in the number line and that my copy is merely a 2nd printing.
At the time I was researching this title, however, I didn’t see this listing and so I was still stumped. I did see a listing for a “review copy” of the first edition, with publisher promotional material laid in. Review copies are usually sent hot off the presses to journalists, bloggers, etc. and so it seemed entirely likely that such a copy would indeed be a first edition. I emailed the seller and explained that I was trying to determine the printing of my own copy and would he be kind enough to tell me whether his first edition had a 1 in the numberline. I was pleasantly surprised to get a prompt reply. Unfortunately, his copy did indeed have a 1 in the number line.
And that is how I determine that I did not have a first edition copy of Choke by Chuck Palahniuk!
I grew up in Greenville, but when I married almost 3 years ago I agreed to move into my husband’s home in Spartanburg. In the years since, though, I’m afraid I’ve done little to explore the city. If it’s located anywhere on Highway 29 I can find it, but other than that I’m out of luck : )
Thus, when Circling Home by Spartanburg native John Lane was recommended to me I thought it would be a great way to learn more about my current home. Lane is a poet, naturalist, writer, and current Wofford English professor. He married his wife, Betsy, late in life and abandoned his wandering ways for a settled life in a “green” home built of sustainable materials on Lawson’s Fork Creek. As a process of that “settlement” he drew a circle a mile in radius around his new house and set out to learn about the history and landscape encompassed within.
I did learn several bits of Spartanbug history unknown to me, but Circling Home is not a dry catalog of facts, but a lyrical personal narrative of a man who sees the beauty and wildness of nature even in a suburban flood plain three miles from downtown Spartanburg. I recommend this book to nature lovers, Walden appreciators, and Sparkle City residents interested in viewing their home from a different perspective.
Book Sense, with the aid of independent children’s bookstores around the country, has compiled a list of notable children’s books for winter 2007/8. Fiction Addiction has several of these titles in stock, including Slam by Nick Hornby and The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World by E.L. Konigsburg, and is happy to special order anything off the list for you. Most special orders will arrive within 2-3 business days.
Oprah’s newest pick for her bookclub is The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, which has first published back in 1989. Follett has just written a sequel, The World Without End, which released in hardcover in October.
For more information, check out Oprah’s site or the info provided by Book Club Girl.
Check Pillars of the Earth availability at Fiction Addiction.
The 2007 National Book Awards have been announced. The winners are:
Fiction: The Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
Nonfiction: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner
Poetry: Time and Materials by Robert Hass
Young People’s Lit: The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Ira Levin, author of many best-selling suspense novels, including The Stepford Wives, The Boys from Brazil, and Rosemary’s Baby, has died. He was 78. Levin’s first novel, A Kiss Before Dying, was written when he was only 22. Many of Levin’s works were filmed and became popular movies.
Norman Mailer, two-time Pulitzer-prize winning author, has died at age 84 of acute renal failure.
Mailer’s own life was as brash as his writing. He was married 6 times, had 9 children, drank, fought, ran for mayor of New York, and crusaded against women’s liberation.
