lotuz
07-26-2018, 08:18 PM
Hi all!
I have been a lurker on the site for quite some time, having been directed here by countless google searches, and last year I finally made an account and started posting. I have really enjoyed participating on this site, and since I'm not on FB and I don't have any bibliophile friends, I don't otherwise get to talk about fancy books, SK or otherwise.
I recently posted for the first time in the P&J thread and I think it's about time I made a collection thread. I have hesitated for some time because SK is not the focus of my collection. In fact, SK books were a very peripheral part of my collection until recently. Two things changed that:
1. Last year I made the decision to redirect my collecting efforts to focus on quality, rather than quantity, and some of the highest quality S/L's are SK books (I can't overstate the impact of Dragon Rebound Editions and Suntup Editions here).
2. The collectors here have really turned me on to collecting SK in a way I never have before, although I have been reading his books for 20+ years, and collecting for 5+. I look at SK books differently now compared to just 6 months ago.
Because it's my thread, and because I'm interested in other people's stories about collecting as well as the actual books they collect, I'm going to tell my collecting story here, in this and subsequent posts. Feel free to ignore all my words and focus on the pics, but please know that I would love to hear more about members' individual collecting journeys, either here or in their respective threads. Bibliophilia is our shared blessing (and curse), and I fully agree with Alec's comment (quoted in at least one person's signature) that our collecting habit is better enjoyed as a shared endeavor.
My non-SK books may go in another collection thread over in the Dutch Hill sub-forum. Some people like this split and some don't. I do, and so I might have both threads (this one first). I might not.
WORDS ABOUT STEPHEN KING
The first author that I got hooked on (as in, went to the library and looked for other books) was R. L. Stine. I started with the Goosebumps books (I'm in my mid-30s, so they would have come out when I was just shy of 10), and pretty quickly transitioned to the Fear Street series. Not too much later, I started reading Stephen King.
The first Stephen King book I saw was the shiny Signet paperback copy of The Shining, which my older brother read and then left in my bedroom. I still have that book!
(This past Christmas, I got the limited Suntup giclee prints of that cover for both of us, to commemorate that important but inadvertent gift from my brother - who I very much looked up to, and who today remains as much a fan as I.)
It looked sooooooo cool, but when I picked it up I couldn't really get into it. But not much later, I discovered IT. I think it was also a discard of my brother's, after he finished it, but I don't exactly remember.
After that was EoTD, and then The Stand, both bought from the local bookstore (back when those existed) with money from mowing lawns. Those three remain my favorite SK books to this day. (Probably as much because of nostalgia as anything - but, really, those are three amazing books, right?!) I don't remember the order after that, but I pretty much kept up until I finished the backlog, and have continued reading SK in fits and bursts since then. There are a few books that I still need to read, both new and old, and I treasure each time that I get to open a new book.
WORDS ABOUT COLLECTING
I have always been a reader, but the journey into collecting was slower and came later.
After I graduated from college, I moved out to San Francisco with some friends. This was back in 2007, when it was possible to go in with a friend and rent a 2 bedroom apartment. I had a retail job, which at the time paid enough to afford rent, enjoy the nightlife, and buy books. One amazing thing about San Francisco then was availability of books. On the bus, on the train, there were always people reading books. There still were in 2015 when I left, but not as many. As a consequence, the thrift stores used to have giant rooms of books for sale - and decent ones too! Not just Danielle Steele and Dan Brown paperbacks. And to supplement that, there were still lots of actual used book stores, too! There were about 6 that were within walking distance of either my apartment or my work. I found lots and lots of interesting books at thrift stores, and if there was something I was specifically looking for, I could pop into a used bookstore and get a copy.
After doing this for 1-2 years, I got pretty good at recognizing the books at thrift stores that were undervalued - the ones that the thrift stores would sell for $0.25 or $1, but that the used book stores sold for $8-10. And so, accidentally, I became a book scout. At first it was to feed my reading habit - I could pick up 2 books at a thrift store for less than a buck, exchange them for $2-4 credit each at a used book store, and get the $8 book store book for $1. I started hitting the thrift stores regularly, and it got easier because I could always tell the new stock and skip the 10,000 John Grisham books that had been there for the past 6 months.
There wasn't a distinct point when I shifted into identifying and buying 1st editions, but it happened. I got burned a lot early on. Used book stores didn't want hardcovers unless they were firsts, so i bought many a "first edition" only to end up donating it back to the thrift store later. Then I found this book, which I have had for almost 10 years, and which is useful to this very day:
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_67811.jpg
So the cycle started: I'd buy mostly paperback thrift store books, and trade them to the used book stores for credit, then cash in a bunch of credit at once to buy a first edition. That allowed me to get some awesome first editions for great prices. Unfortunately, around that same time, the prices for first editions were crashing because of Amazon. but that didn't really affect me because (a) I was buying first editions for my personal collection, which had really started to take off, and (b) I was getting them super cheap due to trade-ins. Used book stores also started closing, which means that I also had access to a lot of stock that was marked down to sell immediately. Would I trade those marked-down books in order to keep more used book stores open? YES, a thousand times yes! But I couldn't and so I did what I could do, and that was to buy a lot of first editions at crazy low prices.
Of course, I was also regularly finding first editions hidden among the thrift store books, which was always a nice treat. I once paid $1 for a first edition of Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls!!
This went on for a number of years, and I amassed a pretty substantial first edition collection for not very much money. And then I discovered S/L books :rock:
I have a lot lot lot to say about S/L books, but this post is already egregiously long and I haven't even started sharing my collection, so I'll be abbreviated here and post more about this in the future.
The highly-abridged timeline is that I discovered Centipede Press in 2013/2014 and got obsessed. I am a Centipede Press completist and CP books make up the largest portion of my remaining collection.
I say "remaining" because my whole collection and my collecting habits changed last year. The person largely responsible for this: Paul Suntup.
While I very much enjoyed my first edition collection, the allure of a well-made book was getting stronger and stronger. I realized that the books I most enjoyed in my collection were the S/L's. The heavy paper. The sewn bindings. The endpapers (oh, the endpapers - I am a total sucker for a hand-marbled endpaper). The cloth and silk and leather. Books made with extra attention to all the physical details. Centipede Press was the first. Charnel House was the second. Via Centipede Press I discovered the works of Tim Powers, and Joe Stefko at Charnel House is the master of creating Tim Powers books. These books were unlike anything I'd ever seen! The highest quality materials, and unique designs to match! So I started seeking these out. This was recent - around 2016.
Then comes late summer of 2017. I have become obsessed with high quality books and have started liquidating my substantial first edition collection in order to get them. I am looking for a traycase maker and via google I come across an article at freaked.com about Firestarter by Dragon Rebound Editions, which I had never heard of. (I'll note that I was regularly visiting the TDT forums by then, but mostly non-King posts and books and had not signed up. I had no idea that Paul was a member).
This was AMAZING! Sawn, scorched sycamore boards!! Italian endpapers!! Leather!! WHAT?!?!
These were exactly the books I was looking for. The continued legacy of the deluxe Centipede Press books and lettered Charnel House books (both of whom I still love).
The idea that there were new presses out there still striving to produce books that are true objects of art was invigorating. And so I continued to sell my first editions, and continued to focus on acquiring the books that made me happiest. And, for the reasons I noted above, I started paying much closer attention to the limited editions of Stephen King.
(If you don't believe that I called this abbreviated, I promise it was...)
Which brings us to:
FINALLY, SOME COLLECTION PICS
Because I don't have a large SK collection, I'm going to share many pictures of a few books rather than a few pictures of many books. Cover shots, spine shots, endpapers. This is very much bookporn (with a nod to HerbertWest who called that out in the P&J post :) ).
First off, the P&J that I shared most recently: the Frankendeluxe Salem's Lot.
SALEM'S LOT - CENTIPEDE PRESS - FRANKENDELUXE
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_6335_1_.JPG
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_6567.jpg
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_6333.JPG
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_6338_1_.jpg
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_6340_1_.jpg
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_6566.jpg
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_6562.jpg
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_6341.jpg
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_6343.jpg
I have been a lurker on the site for quite some time, having been directed here by countless google searches, and last year I finally made an account and started posting. I have really enjoyed participating on this site, and since I'm not on FB and I don't have any bibliophile friends, I don't otherwise get to talk about fancy books, SK or otherwise.
I recently posted for the first time in the P&J thread and I think it's about time I made a collection thread. I have hesitated for some time because SK is not the focus of my collection. In fact, SK books were a very peripheral part of my collection until recently. Two things changed that:
1. Last year I made the decision to redirect my collecting efforts to focus on quality, rather than quantity, and some of the highest quality S/L's are SK books (I can't overstate the impact of Dragon Rebound Editions and Suntup Editions here).
2. The collectors here have really turned me on to collecting SK in a way I never have before, although I have been reading his books for 20+ years, and collecting for 5+. I look at SK books differently now compared to just 6 months ago.
Because it's my thread, and because I'm interested in other people's stories about collecting as well as the actual books they collect, I'm going to tell my collecting story here, in this and subsequent posts. Feel free to ignore all my words and focus on the pics, but please know that I would love to hear more about members' individual collecting journeys, either here or in their respective threads. Bibliophilia is our shared blessing (and curse), and I fully agree with Alec's comment (quoted in at least one person's signature) that our collecting habit is better enjoyed as a shared endeavor.
My non-SK books may go in another collection thread over in the Dutch Hill sub-forum. Some people like this split and some don't. I do, and so I might have both threads (this one first). I might not.
WORDS ABOUT STEPHEN KING
The first author that I got hooked on (as in, went to the library and looked for other books) was R. L. Stine. I started with the Goosebumps books (I'm in my mid-30s, so they would have come out when I was just shy of 10), and pretty quickly transitioned to the Fear Street series. Not too much later, I started reading Stephen King.
The first Stephen King book I saw was the shiny Signet paperback copy of The Shining, which my older brother read and then left in my bedroom. I still have that book!
(This past Christmas, I got the limited Suntup giclee prints of that cover for both of us, to commemorate that important but inadvertent gift from my brother - who I very much looked up to, and who today remains as much a fan as I.)
It looked sooooooo cool, but when I picked it up I couldn't really get into it. But not much later, I discovered IT. I think it was also a discard of my brother's, after he finished it, but I don't exactly remember.
After that was EoTD, and then The Stand, both bought from the local bookstore (back when those existed) with money from mowing lawns. Those three remain my favorite SK books to this day. (Probably as much because of nostalgia as anything - but, really, those are three amazing books, right?!) I don't remember the order after that, but I pretty much kept up until I finished the backlog, and have continued reading SK in fits and bursts since then. There are a few books that I still need to read, both new and old, and I treasure each time that I get to open a new book.
WORDS ABOUT COLLECTING
I have always been a reader, but the journey into collecting was slower and came later.
After I graduated from college, I moved out to San Francisco with some friends. This was back in 2007, when it was possible to go in with a friend and rent a 2 bedroom apartment. I had a retail job, which at the time paid enough to afford rent, enjoy the nightlife, and buy books. One amazing thing about San Francisco then was availability of books. On the bus, on the train, there were always people reading books. There still were in 2015 when I left, but not as many. As a consequence, the thrift stores used to have giant rooms of books for sale - and decent ones too! Not just Danielle Steele and Dan Brown paperbacks. And to supplement that, there were still lots of actual used book stores, too! There were about 6 that were within walking distance of either my apartment or my work. I found lots and lots of interesting books at thrift stores, and if there was something I was specifically looking for, I could pop into a used bookstore and get a copy.
After doing this for 1-2 years, I got pretty good at recognizing the books at thrift stores that were undervalued - the ones that the thrift stores would sell for $0.25 or $1, but that the used book stores sold for $8-10. And so, accidentally, I became a book scout. At first it was to feed my reading habit - I could pick up 2 books at a thrift store for less than a buck, exchange them for $2-4 credit each at a used book store, and get the $8 book store book for $1. I started hitting the thrift stores regularly, and it got easier because I could always tell the new stock and skip the 10,000 John Grisham books that had been there for the past 6 months.
There wasn't a distinct point when I shifted into identifying and buying 1st editions, but it happened. I got burned a lot early on. Used book stores didn't want hardcovers unless they were firsts, so i bought many a "first edition" only to end up donating it back to the thrift store later. Then I found this book, which I have had for almost 10 years, and which is useful to this very day:
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_67811.jpg
So the cycle started: I'd buy mostly paperback thrift store books, and trade them to the used book stores for credit, then cash in a bunch of credit at once to buy a first edition. That allowed me to get some awesome first editions for great prices. Unfortunately, around that same time, the prices for first editions were crashing because of Amazon. but that didn't really affect me because (a) I was buying first editions for my personal collection, which had really started to take off, and (b) I was getting them super cheap due to trade-ins. Used book stores also started closing, which means that I also had access to a lot of stock that was marked down to sell immediately. Would I trade those marked-down books in order to keep more used book stores open? YES, a thousand times yes! But I couldn't and so I did what I could do, and that was to buy a lot of first editions at crazy low prices.
Of course, I was also regularly finding first editions hidden among the thrift store books, which was always a nice treat. I once paid $1 for a first edition of Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls!!
This went on for a number of years, and I amassed a pretty substantial first edition collection for not very much money. And then I discovered S/L books :rock:
I have a lot lot lot to say about S/L books, but this post is already egregiously long and I haven't even started sharing my collection, so I'll be abbreviated here and post more about this in the future.
The highly-abridged timeline is that I discovered Centipede Press in 2013/2014 and got obsessed. I am a Centipede Press completist and CP books make up the largest portion of my remaining collection.
I say "remaining" because my whole collection and my collecting habits changed last year. The person largely responsible for this: Paul Suntup.
While I very much enjoyed my first edition collection, the allure of a well-made book was getting stronger and stronger. I realized that the books I most enjoyed in my collection were the S/L's. The heavy paper. The sewn bindings. The endpapers (oh, the endpapers - I am a total sucker for a hand-marbled endpaper). The cloth and silk and leather. Books made with extra attention to all the physical details. Centipede Press was the first. Charnel House was the second. Via Centipede Press I discovered the works of Tim Powers, and Joe Stefko at Charnel House is the master of creating Tim Powers books. These books were unlike anything I'd ever seen! The highest quality materials, and unique designs to match! So I started seeking these out. This was recent - around 2016.
Then comes late summer of 2017. I have become obsessed with high quality books and have started liquidating my substantial first edition collection in order to get them. I am looking for a traycase maker and via google I come across an article at freaked.com about Firestarter by Dragon Rebound Editions, which I had never heard of. (I'll note that I was regularly visiting the TDT forums by then, but mostly non-King posts and books and had not signed up. I had no idea that Paul was a member).
This was AMAZING! Sawn, scorched sycamore boards!! Italian endpapers!! Leather!! WHAT?!?!
These were exactly the books I was looking for. The continued legacy of the deluxe Centipede Press books and lettered Charnel House books (both of whom I still love).
The idea that there were new presses out there still striving to produce books that are true objects of art was invigorating. And so I continued to sell my first editions, and continued to focus on acquiring the books that made me happiest. And, for the reasons I noted above, I started paying much closer attention to the limited editions of Stephen King.
(If you don't believe that I called this abbreviated, I promise it was...)
Which brings us to:
FINALLY, SOME COLLECTION PICS
Because I don't have a large SK collection, I'm going to share many pictures of a few books rather than a few pictures of many books. Cover shots, spine shots, endpapers. This is very much bookporn (with a nod to HerbertWest who called that out in the P&J post :) ).
First off, the P&J that I shared most recently: the Frankendeluxe Salem's Lot.
SALEM'S LOT - CENTIPEDE PRESS - FRANKENDELUXE
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_6335_1_.JPG
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_6567.jpg
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_6333.JPG
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_6338_1_.jpg
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_6340_1_.jpg
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_6566.jpg
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_6562.jpg
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_6341.jpg
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/984/medium/IMG_6343.jpg