Sci-fi paperbacks

[spud42]

You sir, are an enabler.

Fortuitously my digital library has a few gigabytes of shelf space left. which is fortunate due to the lack of physical space available to me.

[ffutures]

You sir, are an enabler.

Fortuitously my digital library has a few gigabytes of shelf space left. which is fortunate due to the lack of physical space available to me.

I know the feeling - as part of my current bout of decluttering I'm giving a hundred and fifty or so books to local charity shops (and it's getting harder to find shops that want them) and still have about a hundred that I want to shelve but don't currently have room for, despite having more than 110ft of shelf space in this room, and about the same again in the rest of my flat. The perils of a long term (approx 60 years and counting) book addiction...

Last time I did this, circa 2005, I gave away and sold roughly 300 books, when I did a flat swap in 1995 I had to get rid of a vast collection of SF magazines, many of which were pulp and rapidly disintegrating so essentially worthless. It was NOT fun.

After that I'll have to start dealing with the DVDs, laserdiscs, etc. etc...

[spud42]

i feel the pain. Due to various domestic upheavals i have had to divest my self of my paperback collections several times.
i still have to digitise my music collection about 1/2 way through. its a tedious process. not a lot of fun.
I lost a 2 TB external HDD a couple of years ago. It had my Movie and TV collection on it and i didnt get around to having a backup of it. some stuff i probably cant find again. like all of the "Is Born " series.. Jaguar, a racing car, a helicopter etc..... https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424706/

[Cody]

Due to various domestic upheavals...

Been through a few of those, one way or another. Parting with my vinyl collection was the most painful.

[Cody]

Next on my re-reading journey, one of my favourite Asimov tales: Nightfall (the 1990 expanded edition with Silverberg).

[spud42]

yes a very good read that one.
im currently listening to the disc world series on audiobook. currently book 17 Interesting times.

[Cody]

Audiobooks? How about old-time radio drama? Some real gems in this collection from the CBS Radio Workshop.

[spud42]

bookmarked, thanks Cody

[Wildeblood]

The reason I very rarely buy new books is because here in Australia the paperbacks are anywhere from $20 to $33 each I'm damned if I will pay $33 for a paperback ! I can get 10 books for that at my second hand bookstore. As also stated everyone wants to write a trilogy at the least then most continue on from there.. so that's $100 to read the trilogy.. not happening.. maybe if I win millions on the lotto I can afford this but with a mortgage and everything else it ain't happening.

At that price one presumes that they are air-flown for the eager Australian readers who need them hot from the printing presses - and that on arrival they are lovingly hand-delivered to your front door with a Belgian chocolate and a steaming cup of blue mountain coffee...

The ridiculous price of books in Australia dates back to 1981. Prior to the introduction of 10% GST on retail prices, Australia had wholesale sales tax, levied at different rates on different products. In the 1981 federal budget, then treasurer, John Howard moved books into the luxury items category, which attracted the highest 40% sales tax. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy: they immediately became luxury items most people couldn't afford. (Do you remember when VAT was 10%, pommies?)

It was 43 years ago, and I remember budget night, 1981, better than I remember yesterday. It was the origin of my contempt for John Howard, which only grew over the intervening years.

[Cholmondely]

In the good old days you would go to the oxford university copyists to get a copy of whatever you needed for university. They would start copying out (say) the first part of Psuedo-Dionysius' Celestial Hierarchies for you, while another was copying out the second part for me and another, the third part for a_c_ ... you would eventually get the entire thing, but it would take time - and arrived in installments. The invention of printing changed a lot - and also made indexing and tables of contents possible since each book finally had identical pages!

Even then, things were different. I came across a super story about an early printer travelling around Italy with his printing press in his wagon. He'd visit Padua, raise funding and print up the first tractate, selling what he could. Then on to Venice where he'd raise money for the second tractate and sell what he could of the first and second. Then to Ravenna where he'd raise money for the third,... et cetera, et cetera.