Stories about Paper 1: Paperbacks
Most people who know me via the internet only know me in the context of BJDs. My real obsession for the last twenty years has been books - reading, buying, selling. As a bookseller, I've sold $2 Harlequin romances to little old ladies, and I've sold $30,000 books to Hollywood producers. I spent most of my free time as a young adult driving all over Southern California visiting used book stores. I threw away everything but the clothes on my back and came home from a summer in Greece with a giant suitcase full of books. It took at least ten years for me to let my own bibliophile girlfriend touch my art books without my hovering anxiously over her. The first thing I look for in any room is a bookshelf.
Doll collecting has taken up a lot of my time in the last year, and while this certainly cut into my book budget and reading time it also gave me another way to appreciate my other collection.
I took photos of a few of my favorite book covers. Not necessarily my favorite books, but books that I enjoy physically looking at and holding. Sometimes I enjoy them for their simplicity, sometimes for their luridness. Sometimes the memory I have of acquiring the book makes it special, other times it's the content. Once in a while I'm going to tell a few stories about my books. Here is the first installment.
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This is the edition of The Lord of the Rings that I read as a child. It was the only thing that interested me on my father's bookshelf other than the Robert Heinlein. I was much too young when I read it and for many years afterwards I suffered from nightmares about giant spiders whenever I was under stress. I love the transformation of the landscape from the round green forms of vibrant life to the shattered horror of the final cover. The warping of the animals from innocent tree lizards to agonized beasts of war is gut wrenching and for me recall Picasso's Guernica. The sinuous lines of the tree branches, the marsh rivulets, and the streaming banners...
Doll collecting has taken up a lot of my time in the last year, and while this certainly cut into my book budget and reading time it also gave me another way to appreciate my other collection.
I took photos of a few of my favorite book covers. Not necessarily my favorite books, but books that I enjoy physically looking at and holding. Sometimes I enjoy them for their simplicity, sometimes for their luridness. Sometimes the memory I have of acquiring the book makes it special, other times it's the content. Once in a while I'm going to tell a few stories about my books. Here is the first installment.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is the edition of The Lord of the Rings that I read as a child. It was the only thing that interested me on my father's bookshelf other than the Robert Heinlein. I was much too young when I read it and for many years afterwards I suffered from nightmares about giant spiders whenever I was under stress. I love the transformation of the landscape from the round green forms of vibrant life to the shattered horror of the final cover. The warping of the animals from innocent tree lizards to agonized beasts of war is gut wrenching and for me recall Picasso's Guernica. The sinuous lines of the tree branches, the marsh rivulets, and the streaming banners...