Stay-at-home shelfie #65, plus Shelfie Addenda

OK, I changed my mind from yesterday. I'm just going to combine the last few things into one post and wrap up the Shelfie 2020 series on this final day of May.

This last shelf is in our living room and it features cookbooks and food-related books. The Oxford Companion to Food, published in 1999, is a dandy encyclopedia of cooking and food history. As one reviewer on Goodreads sums up: "God I love this book. If you're a food nerd you can simply open it to some random page and you will lose hours." If you're looking for something a little less weighty, one of my other favorite books on this topic is Reay Tannahill's Food in History.

The blue-spined book between the orange- and red-spined books is a nicer copy of A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband, a book I wrote about extensively in 2011 and 2012. I took the ephemera that was tucked away inside the falling-apart copy and put it inside this spiffier volume, hopefully to enthrall future generations of bibliophiles as it is passed down. Here's a rundown of all the posts on this book:

• A little bit of this and that
• "A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband"
• Bettina's Hallowe'en recipes
• Bettina's Thanksgiving in the country (and more)
• More stuff from inside "A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband"

This 1953 edition of The Joy of Cooking, which has sold more than 18 million copies, is one that was removed from the Helen Kate Furness Free Library and subsequently brought home by Mom years ago. It's not the "family" copy. As I mentioned in a November 2018 post, I pruned the circa-1970 family copy of The Joy of Cooking, a decision that I am becoming more regretful about. For more about The Joy of Cooking, I recommend "A Case for Three Copies of the Joy of Cooking" by Alex Beggs, this recent installment of the Omnibus podcast, and "The Obsessive Sport of Shopping for a Vintage 'Joy of Cooking'" by Genevieve Walker.

The bizarre, wonderful and golden-spined Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices is a cookbook I wrote about in March 2018 and February 2020.

About half of those staplebound recipe booklets to the right are from the Pennsylvania Dutch cooking genre. I'm a little wonky about picking one up any time I come across them. There's truly no need to have that many, but I justify it by saying they don't take up much space at all. Here are some posts in which I've discussed them:

• Pennsylvania Dutch recipe for funeral pie (aka raisin pie)
• Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine: Schnitz and knepp recipe on old napkin
• Cooking up some calf's head soup, pawnhaas, tzitterli and streivlin
• Enjoy a couple "Best-Loved Pennsylvania Dutch Recipes"
• Who wants sauerbraten, bacon muffins & tangle britches?
• Some Pennsylvania Dutch recipes and tiny illustrations
• Fruitcake: Lost corners, rabbit holes and recipes
• Pennsylvania Dutch recipes from C.H. Musselman Co.

Finally, Pennsylvania Fairs and Country Festivals by Craig Kennedy includes a chapter on the York Fair, which, just a few days ago, canceled its 2020 event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here's an excerpt from its statement:

"(York, PA) The 2020 York State Fair has been canceled due to concerns regarding the coronavirus pandemic. The Fair Board held a meeting on Tuesday, May 26 deciding to cancel the Fair. ... This is the first time the fair has been canceled since the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic. We understand that this global pandemic has affected so many individuals and families that are normally involved or attend the fair. The importance of those people surpasses the difficult decision that had to be made. We also believe that while we are unsure of what the end of July will look like in regard to the pandemic, we know that opening the fair while following all guidelines set by local government and the CDC would be insurmountable at this point."

Shelfie Addenda
Speaking of the pandemic, I went into the LNP|LancasterOnline newsroom on West King Street in Lancaster yesterday morning to clear out my desk in preparation for our intended move to another building later this summer. It was my first trip to the newsroom since March 13; I have been working from home since then. In shelfie #25, I mentioned that I thought a book by Valeria Luiselli might still be at my LNP desk. Indeed, it was. So here's my "work shelfie":

And, to wrap it all up and with some help from Mr. Angelino, aka Banjo, on this sunny Sunday morning, here are some of the books that I acquired after starting the shelfie series on March 30. If I do another project like this in 5-to-10 years, perhaps we'll see them again. (The idea of that, though, is a bit exhausting.)

Stay-at-home shelfie #64

It's the last shelfie in the bedroom! (We're not quite done yet, though. There's a single shelf housing my books outside the bedroom, so we'll get there tomorrow. And there will also be a final post after that with some addenda. Because Shelfie Addenda would be a great band name, and I hereby claim it.¹)

This part of the final shelf contains two books about outsider artist Henry Darger, including this one by Klaus Biesenbach. There is Modern Ruins: Portraits of Place in the Mid-Atlantic Region, by photographer Shaun O'Boyle, which was a gift from Joan via the famed YDR Auction. And perhaps my favorite book of photos (and a favorite of many): Uncommon Places by Stephen Shore.

Then are some family members' school yearbooks: The 1934 and 1937 volumes of The Dunes, from Hammond (Indiana) High School (my grandmother's); the 1967 Lycoming College yearbook (Mom and Dad); and the 1988 and 1989 volumes from Strath Haven High School in Wallingford, Pennsylvania (mine). Here's an interesting article from The San Diego Union-Tribune about one group of yearbook editors who worked hard and found creative ways to finish their Class of 2020 yearbook this spring after schools closed due to COVID-19. I'm sure it's a scene that was repeated in many different ways across the nation.

And there's the 1969 facsimile reprint of the 1908 Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog. It was a gift long ago from Dad to Mom. He inscribed it: "Given as an early Christmas present to my wife on Dec. 18, 1970 — 4 days after the birth of Christopher. JAO."

In the 1980s, for fun, Mom and I would make lists using the Sears catalog. We'd imagine that we were living at the turn of the century and had, say, $200 to stock our new house with furniture, kitchen gadgets, etc. We'd keep track of how much money we had left and try to make the wisest purchases possible while still having all the household essentials. If we did well on own spending, perhaps we could splurge on a 25-cent tin of peanuts or even a spiffy pocket watch. That's what we did for fun back before the internet, kids! Much to my disappointment, none of those old lists are tucked away inside the catalog. But I still have the memories!

Footnote
1.

Stay-at-home shelfie #63

We have arrived at the last shelf in the bedroom!

I am a big fan of David Macaulay books, as you can see. Castle and Cathedral are probably my two favorites. Albert Lorenz has some similarities to Macaulay, with his epic illustrations.

My personal story of 9/11 in a newsroom can be found in this post.

House on the Rock in Wisconsin has long been one of my hoped-for road-trip destinations. Is that a little less likely now? Time will tell.

It's a Book by Lane Smith was a Christmas present from Mom about a decade ago. The gag was that I was always able to tell which of my Christmas presents were books ⁠— because, duh ⁠— and I would exclaim, "It's a book!" But, more than a gag gift, this a slender volume about how truly lovely and satisfying books are, compared to other forms of media in this digital age.

Those are some browsing books on the right.

Back over on the left, the two volumes with nothing on the spine are the same beautiful book: 1882's The Heart of Europe From the Rhine to the Danube. A Series of Striking and Interesting Views. With text by Leo de Colange. I discovered the beat-up copy years ago, when I really started collecting older books. And I loved it so much that I later tracked down a nicer copy. I wrote about one of the interior illustrations in 2017.

Stay-at-home shelfie #62

Shelfie #62
There are some books here. There is an exit to your right.

>EXAMINE BOOKS.

There is nothing tremendously noteworthy about this small collection of books.

>EXAMINE ENCYLPEDIAS.

I don't know the word "ENCYLPEDIAS".

>EXAMINE ENCYCLOPEDIAS.

You already did that in Shelfie #61.

>LOOK INSIDE BOOKS.

What do you think this is? Project Gutenberg?

>TOUCH BOOKS.

They are not your books to touch.
Your score has gone down 2 points.

>SMELL BOOKS.

Okay, buddy. Enough of these shenanigans. Take it outside.

>GO OUTSIDE.

Outside
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Stay-at-home shelfie #61

No respectable home should be without a set of fine encyclopedias! I firmly believe this, even while acknowledging that predatory sales tactics of the past resulted in families buying overpriced sets they could hardly afford. "Encyclopedia Sale Abuses Go On Despite New Laws," an article by Grace Lichtenstein in the September 26, 1971, edition of The New York Times noted:

"The Department of Consumer Affairs ... charged, among other things, that [Encyclopedia] Britannica salesmen used language 'designed to instill fear and anxiety in parents that their children will fall in school unless an encyclopedia is purchased.' It also said salesmen first offered the 24‐volume set for $1,200 and then came up with a 'special deal,' which was actually the same set in a much cheaper binding.¹ ...

"Many of the tactics mentioned in complaints were heard by a reporter when, posing as a potential customer, she was visited by salesmen from Field and Grolier last month. The two Field salesmen based their pitch on 'concern' for 'your children's education.' Declaring that children now must know a great deal when they enter kindergarten, they suggested both the 15‐volume Childcraft and the 20‐volume World Book encyclopedia for a special price of $320.35, plus finance charges² if bought on an installment plan."

But time and changing access to information caught up with the encyclopedia salesmen. In 2012, Encyclopedia Britannica announced it was going fully digital; door-to-door sales had ended in 1996. The Saturday Evening Post wrote about the history of these knowledge peddlers in 2017.

My encyclopedia was inexpensive. I purchased it a couple years ago at York's Book Nook Bonanza (which has canceled its 2020 event because of COVID-19). It's the 1946 edition of Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia and Fact-Index, which was first published in 1922. Guy Stanton Ford (1873-1962) was the Editor-in-Chief. It wasn't until I got home that I realized — despite being sure I had triple-checked — that I was missing a volume. I had no M! How could I continue without "Macaroni" through "Mythology"? Eventually, an eBay seller came to the rescue with the single volume I needed (although it's from 1948 instead of 1946). Now I can read all about Mexico, Milwaukee and monks.

Laying across the top is Science Year, The World Book Science Annual for 1971, which I wrote about in March 2019,

Footnotes
1. $1,200 in 1971 is the equivalent of $7,682 today. Even with an installment plan, that's ghastly.
2. The finance charges were 12% annually!

Stay-at-home shelfie #60

Can Zen be found within in a book? Have I been seeking enlightenment — or just collecting another little subset of books? Can all simultaneously be true?

These books, for temporary lack of a better spot, had been sitting atop the books of shelfie #59. Their location also puts them within the direct view from my shikibuton each evening. I figured I'd given them their own shelfie, though I do not really know what to say about them yet. Perhaps I will just list them.

• Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse. (This is the paperback version of the 1922 novel that I remember from either my parents' or grandmother's shelf)
• If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! by Sheldon B. Kopp. (I think I first became aware of this 1972 book by browsing Goodreads)
• The Book of Tea, by Okakura Kakuzō. (1930 Duffield and Company edition of essay originally published in 1906)
• Essays in Idleness and Hôjôki by Yoshida Kenkō and Kamo no Chōmei.
• Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice, by Shunryu Suzuki.
• The Myth of the Eternal Return or, Cosmos and History, by Mircea Eliade. (first published in 1949)
• The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation, by Chögyam Trungpa.

* * *
Highly recommended related reading

Please check out Susan Jennings' "Abandoning hope then putting it back together," published just a few days ago on My Inside Voices. She writes of struggling with the concept of hope amid the COVID-19 pandemic and notes at one point: "I think that’s the type of hope I’m after. That we can’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but that we can attempt to be better within that."

Stay-at-home shelfie #59

A miscellaneous collection of older volumes here. The super-skinny hardcovers are part of the American Library Association's Reading with a Purpose series from the 1920s and 1930s.¹ Their original provenance was the Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and Industry library. I got them a few years ago during the (lamentable) closeout sale of Canaday's Book Barn in Carlisle. You can see one of the old Drexel bookplates at right. Titles include Biology, English History, Invention and Society, The United States in Recent Times, George Washington, Americans from Abroad, The Europe of our Day and 1931's The Pacific Area in International Relations, which contains this nugget:

"The diplomatic history of the Far East in recent years has in fact been largely concerned with the problem of keeping such demands as Japan made in 1915 within reasonable bounds and maintaining on the one hand the territorial integrity of China, and on the other the right of all foreign powers to trade on equal terms in the Chinese market, while at the same time giving China an opportunity to set her house in order and free herself from restrictions on her sovereignty."

Moving along, other eclectic titles include Principles of Clothing Selection (May 2018 post), Choosing an Occupation, Airways, and The Nürnberg Stove, which was featured way back in 2013.

1953's The First Book of Space Travel, written and illustrated by Jeanne Bendick, is as fabulous as it looks. Also on this shelf is my great-grandmother's 1904 book on George Washington, with its protective cover.

Footnote
1. For more on this series, check out these two articles by Salvatore De Sando:

• Publications: Reading with a Purpose, Numbers 1 to 15
• Publications: Reading with a Purpose, Numbers 16 to 29

Stay-at-home shelfie #58

Toward the left there is a single volume from the My Book House series and a book about the history of the series: Olive Beaupré Miller and the Book House for Children, by Dorothy Loring Taylor.¹ I've mentioned My Book House previously in the posts Pete and Jeff's lending library and Katherine Sturges Dodge illustration.

The reddish book in the middle is 1914's Better Rural Schools by George Herbert Betts and Otis E. Hall. I need to keep up my reputation for having obscure stuff on the shelves, right? This volume is filled with wonderful illustrations and old photographs of schoolhouses. And one day I should probably ... well, you know. I can add that this book, per inscriptions up front, previously belonged to Walter Kramer and Pearl Fogelsanger. (Probably this Pearl Fogelsanger.)

This is the 1960 seven-volume edition of Lands and Peoples from the Grolier Society. I'm surprised there isn't more written about these beautiful and informative books, which went through many revisions and design updates from the 1920s onward through at least the 1970s. The best memories I could find were via Amazon reviews of the 1957 edition:

• "I devoured this series growing up, and found in it again my inspirations for dance."
• "The world as it used to be! Lots of photos of places no longer there or so changed you wish you could have seen in the old days."
• "I had this set as a child. I loved it then and I love it now."

Helen Hynson Merrick is listed as the Editor in Chief of the 1960 edition. When she died in October 1973 in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, at age 67, The New York Times noted in her obituary that she was also the author of two books for children: The First Book of Norway and Sweden.

Footnotes
1. It's also interesting to see what has and what has not changed compared to this January 2016 shelfie, which was in a whole nother house.

Stay-at-home shelfie #57

Hey, look! It's shelfie #1 off to the far right. We truly are coming full circle.

Today's shelfie features a modest little set of Shakespeare books. Because if you have the Complete Works of William Shakespeare in a single volume, you're pretty much good to go, right? Folk-lore of Shakespeare is a delightful 1884 volume by the delightfully named Rev. T.F. Thiselton Dyer, M.A. Oxon. He was mentioned two years ago in this post and that other book of his, Strange Pages from Family Papers, is shown in shelfie #28. The first sentence of Folk-lore of Shakespeare is: "The wealth of Shakespeare's luxuriant imagination and glowing language seems to have been poured forth in the graphic accounts which he has given us of the fairy tribe." Chapter titles include Fairies, Witches, Ghosts, Birds, Animals, Plants, Folk-Medicine, Rings and Precious Stones, Dances, Punishments, Proverbs, Fishes and Sundry Superstitions. The owner of this book from long ago bent down several dozen page corners.

To the right of Folk-lore of Shakespeare is Tales from Shakespeare, which is "designed for the use of young persons." It was first published in 1807 and it was actually written by Charles Lamb and his sister, Mary Lamb. But Wikipedia notes that "Mary did not get her name on the title page till the seventh edition in 1838." Alas, her name isn't on this 1865 edition.

The Collected Jorkens is a three-volume set of short stories by Lord Dunsany (aka the delightful but also silly "Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany") The set was issued by Night Shade Books in 2004-2005 and can now be rather hard to find. The stories are fantastic tales that involve the character Joseph Jorkens and are an important part of the subgenre of "club tales." As Wikipedia notes: "The Jorkens stories are usually told in the 'frame' of a gentlemen's club in London, to which the narrator is invited in the first story, and of which he becomes a member. In general, Jorkens is sitting, and his attention is caught by someone else trying to tell a story, whereupon he provides a better story, in return, before or after or both, for whiskey."

Stephen King uses this form for some of his short stories, but with an appropriately creepier setting. As the Stephen King Wiki notes: "This unnamed Club has been located at 249B East Thirty-Fifth Street for longer than any of its members can remember. ... Stevens has been the butler for countless years. The primary purpose of the club is alluded to by the inscription on the main fireplace's keystone: 'It is the tale, not he who tells it.' Most nights, one or more of the members will share a story with the others. The Thursday night before Christmas is traditionally reserved for a 'tale of the uncanny.'"

Additionally, according to that Wiki: "The library at 249B East Thirty-Fifth Street is notable for its collection of works that do not strictly exist in this world — written by nonexistent authors, published under nonexistent imprints. Stevens associates this with the 'many rooms' upstairs, and the many entrances and exits thereof."

Long Room Interior, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC BY-SA 3.0
Diliff / CC BY-SA

Stay-at-home shelfie #56

Getting in just under the wire with today's shelfie. So much for blogging a few days ahead, as I was earlier in this series. (It's been a long work week.) In big news, we have arrived at the Last Bedroom Bookcase™. The end is within sight! Whatever will I do for content when this series is over? Perhaps I'll blog my sock cabinet. (Yes, it's a cabinet.) Then again, this isn't called FootwearGreat.¹

Longtime readers know that I love old textbooks, right up through the 1970s. I've blogged about many of them over the years under the School Days label (a good rundown can also be found here). But I haven't actually kept most of those old school books. For collecting, it just seems like another Category Too Far.^A

These are some of the really old school books that are still on my shelves. I have a real soft spot for geography textbooks, so they are well-represented. There is also a civics textbook and a couple other U.S. history textbooks (as written by the winners, of course). Also: a two-volume history of the Rhine and the absolutely gorgeous 1888 book Visits to Remarkable Places by William Howitt^*.

Literal footnote
1. Domain names that are available as of the writing of this footnote: FootwearGreat.com, FootwearGreat.net, FootwearGreat.info, FootwearGreat.guru, FootwearGreat.photography.

Alphanote
A. Featuring Lex van Delden as the Oberscharführer.

Asterisknote
* Howell was also the author of The Rural Life of England and The Literature and Romance of Northern Europe: Constituting a Complete History of the Literature of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland, and the co-translator, with his wife Mary, of The History of Magic, To which is added an Appendix of the most remarkable and best authenticated stories of Apparitions, Dreams, Second Sight, Somnambulism, Predictions, Divination, Witchcraft, Vampires, Fairies, Table-turning, and Spirit-rapping. So there.

Stay-at-home shelfie #55

It's an Unnecessary Dramatic Angle (UDA) for the second Mostly Sociology shelf. Some of these might be better fits over on the nonfiction/history bookshelf (shelfies #29 through #36), but that's the fun of Perpetual Shelf Sorting (PSS). One is never finished sorting.

Essayist Rebecca Solnit is the clear winner for most books on this shelf. I'll just list out the other authors present: Jia Tolentino, Kameron Hurley, Sharmila Sen, bell hooks, Suki Kim, Matt Haig, John B. Judis, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, John Crowley, Alvin Toffler and James Herriot.

And if that's not the first time that Alvin Toffler has been mentioned in the same sentence with all those others, I'll eat my hat.

I could have linked out to everyone named above, but if you are interested in learning more about any of these folks, you can certainly do the Googling and surfing yourself, right? That's the fun of it ⁠— letting the links lead you on a journey to discover new authors, ideas, books....

If you've been reading along with these shelfies and haven't yet added any "new to you" books or authors to your to-read lists, then one of us is doing it wrong.

Stay-at-home shelfie #54

It's Mostly Sociology on this nonfiction shelf, as we continue to wind our way down a narrow black bookcase. (I have put bookcases in every nook and cranny where they'll fit in the bedroom.)

1993's Stonewall by Martin Duberman is a historical narrative through the eyes of some who experienced the 1969 Stonewall riots, violent demonstrations by members of New York City's LGBT community that helped to serve as a catalyst for the gay rights movement. My son, Ashar, is transgender and so, yes, I do have several books on the topic — to better educate myself and also because Kate Bornstein and Sarah McBride, among many others, are terrific writers who are well worth reading.

Chanel Miller's Know My Name and Jaquira Díaz's Ordinary Girls are two well-reviewed books that were published last autumn, which seems like a million years ago. Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community is a 2012 book on Native American history that was written by a Native American woman, Brenda J. Child.

Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam, edited by Bernard Edelman, was published in 1985 and features the letters and photographs of Americans who served in the Vietnam War. Perhaps some of you remember the 1987 documentary, produced by HBO, that features some of the book's content. There are numerous illustrations in the book, including 13 pages featuring the handwriting of Air Force Capt. Edward Alan Brudno. After being forced to eject during a mission over North Vietnam in 1965, Brudno endured 2,675 days (nearly 7½ years) as a prisoner of war, undergoing unfathomable torture at times. The book features some of the few letters Brudno was allowed to send home to his family during his captivity. His writing is small, tight and precise.

Brudno was released from captivity on February 12, 1973, and during the week before he returned home, according to the book, Brudno penned his Dream Sheets, "lists of things about which he had been dreaming at the time." There are nine of these sheets printed in Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam. He writes of contacting friends and family, places he wants to visit (Library! he wrote, with an exclamation point), his educational interests to explore, his clothing and grooming, and so much more. So many lists detailing his plans for freedom.

Less than four months after his release from captivity and one day before his 33rd birthday, on June 3, 1974, Brudno took his own life. In a 1998 essay for Newsweek, his brother, Robert J. Brudno, wrote this: "Suicide never has simple causes, but his story reveals some unfinished business from the Vietnam War. ... Years ago, I tried to get my brother's name added to the Vietnam Memorial wall. I was told that I could not, because the wall was for servicemen who were killed in Vietnam or died later from wounds received there. Technically, I guess, Alan Brudno was mortally wounded back here."

Air Force Capt. Edward Alan Brudno's name was finally added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Memorial Day 2004.

His name will be forever on that list: PANEL 5E, LINE 2 OF THE WALL.

We should remember his other lists, too.

Stay-at-home shelfie #53

At last, we return to the alphabetical-by-author fiction, which we paused with shelfie #25 back on April 21. These last 1½ shelves take us from O through Z. I guess that's a little bit of a surprise, being able to finish up with so little space. But I have a dearth of R's, S's and T's — popular letters! — in this category.

After leading off with the wonderful Flannery O'Connor, authors here include Tommy Orange and Helen Oyeyemi (Whose Goodreads bio is: "Helen Oyeyemi is a British novelist. She lives in Prague with an ever-increasing number of teapots, and has written eight books so far."). There's The Overstory by Richard Powers, which I'm anxious to get to. Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country has been adapted into an HBO series that will debut this summer.

Other authors here (some of whose works have been translated) include Iraq's Ahmed Saadawi, South Korea's Ha Seong-nan, Sweden's Karin Tidbeck, China's Can Xue, Chile's Alejandro Zambra, Serbia's Zoran Živković, and Pittsburgh's Anjali Sachdeva.

Alison C. Rollins' powerful poetry volume Library of Small Catastrophes is described this way on Goodreads: "Drawing from Jorge Luis Borges’ fascination with the library, Rollins uses the concept of the archive to offer a lyric history of the ways in which we process loss."

Partially obscured at the end of the first shelf is Lucy Woods' unsettling collection of short stories, Diving Belles.

Leslie Jamison's well-reviewed 2019 book of essays, Make It Scream, Make It Burn, doesn't belong with the fiction, of course. I guess you can call it a preview of what's coming next...

Stay-at-home shelfie #52

This is a Mostly Ghostly adjunct shelf, a vertical pile and a sort-of thematic continuation of the books from way back on shelfie #1, which, looking back upon, I provided absolutely no commentary for.

So, first, let's rectify that. Here is the retroactive play-by-play for shelfie #1:

The top shelf includes two novels by Charlie Jane Anders, two books that journalist and Pennsylvania native Harry Warner Jr. (1922-2003) wrote about the history of science fiction fandom (All Our Yesterdays and A Wealth of Fable)¹, and some works by Neil Gaiman (The Ocean at the End of the Lane has surpassed Neverwhere as my favorite Gaiman novel). There are also some mid-century anthologies of science fiction edited by Groff Conklin.

The second shelf contains the start of the Clifford Simak novels (which continue on shelfie #2), some Hans Holzer paranormal paperbacks, and then a bunch of other purportedly nonfiction books about ghosts and hauntings, mostly within the United Kingdom. I have featured several of them in past posts, including A Ghost Hunter's Game Book, Haunted Houses, Haunted England, and Haunted Britain.

And so that brings us to today's shelfie. Most of these are books by Susy Smith (1911-2011) — Widespread Psychic Wonders, World of the Strange, Ghosts Around the House, Prominent American Ghosts, Haunted Houses for the Millions, The Conversion of a Psychic, Confessions of a Psychic, Today's Witches. They're still entertaining to read (taken with the requisite spoonful of salt) and, as I've mentioned before, I have deep nostalgia for the paperbacks by Susy Smith, Hans Holzer and their ilk that we had around the house when I was a kid. This is my semi-permanent staging area for a future big post on Smith.

Footnote
1. I would have sworn I had a Papergreat post about Harry Warner Jr. Sigh. Add it to the list.

Stay-at-home shelfie #51

Sliding over to the right side of the Mostly Ghostly shelf, we have unsettling story collections by the wonderful Robert Aickman (1914-1982), followed by modern tale-spinners Kelly Link, Sharma Shields and Silvia Moreno-Garcia (all recommended). Carmen Maria Machado's tremendous Her Body and Other Parties goes here, too, but it was loaned out to Joan when the photo was taken.

There's an incomplete collection of books by J.W. Ocker, who's been mentioned frequently on Papergreat over the years. You can find his great stuff at oddthingsiveseen.com. His newest book, due out this fall, will be Cursed Objects: Strange but True Stories of the World's Most Infamous Items. I will have to make room for that one, for sure!

Trade paperback is the exact right format for reading and collecting Ray Bradbury books. Next to Bradbury are two Bart House editions of H.P. Lovecraft books that I've featured: The Weird Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Dunwich Horror.

Then there's Superstition and the Press, a fun browsing book that I discovered more than 20 years ago. It was published in 1983 and is filled with all of the dubious reporting on In Search Of... level paranormal phenomena that appeared in American newspapers from the 1950s through early 1980s. From the back cover:

"(Author Curtis D. MacDougall) provides a devastating critique of the treatment by the press of claims of supernatural phenomena. ... The author's conclusion is that newspapers, with rare exceptions, treat claims of supernatural experiences and paranormal phenomena without questioning their validity. This is an age of science, contends Professor MacDougall, but not of scientific mindedness."

Chapter titles include Horoscopes, Prophecy, Doomsday, Fortune Telling, Ghosts, Poltergeists and Exorcism, Sea Serpents, Witchcraft, Cults, Gurus, Relics, ESP and UFOs. The good news is that we (the mainstream media) don't cover nearly as much of that stuff today. The bad news is we (the people) still don't put enough belief or trust in science today.

And, finally, there's been another blunder. (The shelfie photgrapher really should be sacked.) Not pictured, but to the right of Superstition and the Press, is 1926's The Psychic in the House by Walter Franklin Prince. (For the entertainment value, of course, not the science value.)

Stay-at-home shelfie #50

It turns out that, here on the Mostly Ghostly shelf, there was a small zone of books that were not originally included in either shelfie #49 or shelfie #50. Yours truly became confused during the photography session, but there was a legimate reason for the confusion: There are two books titled Best Ghost Stories. So I mostly missed the volumes between Algernon Blackwood's Best Ghost Stories and Sheridan Le Fanu's Best Ghost Stories.

So here, to the right, is a new photo of the Almost Lost Volumes. We wouldn't want to miss any books along the way, right?

Without the new photo, we might have missed the marvelous M.R. James, one of the most important and influential writers in the history of ghost stories. There is also a book of Algernon Blackwood's John Silence tales. Silence strikes me as a progenitor of Marvel's Doctor Strange. In fact, within the first few pages of the 1908 Dr. John Silence tale "A Psychical Invasion," Blackwood writes that Silence's origin involves "a total disappearance from the world for five years," "a long and severe training, at once physical, mental, and spiritual," and a "strange quest" that transformed him into a "singularly developed doctor" with "special powers." I rest my case.

Also in this shelfie, we have volumes by Ambrose Bierce, Nathaniel Hawthorne and one from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that hails from the Dr. W.B. Konkle Memorial Library in Montoursville. And there are three volumes by Tim Prasil, whose wonderful content can be found at brombonesbooks.com. There's also a book by Mark Rees, who has this great Twitter profile: "Journalist. Author. Cultural adventurer. Writes about the arts, history and folklore." Finally, looming large and purple in the middle is Stephen King's nonfiction Danse Macabre, which I've been returning to regularly since the early 1980s. (I mentioned it most recently in a rambling March 23 post.)

Stay-at-home shelfie #49

Now we're at the Mostly Ghostly shelf, which is on the other side of the cabinet-top that also holds the International Culture & History shelf. Can you think of a better group of four guests to have over for dinner than Vincent Price, Bela Lugosi, Shirley Jackson and Algernon Blackwood?!

The first book has summaries of most of Price's films, and the second is a biography written by his daughter, Victoria Price. Then there's the Lugosi biography that I mentioned in the 2018 "paying it forward" post, followed by Ruth Franklin's recent biography, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life. And that's followed by some of Jackson's iconic novels and short stories, including a volume I picked up for 25¢ at a 2014 yard sale. Then there's some William Hope Hodgson, including that edition of The House on the Borderland that I adore. (Sorry, though, for not inviting William to the dinner party.) And finally some chill-filled Blackwood volumes. I wrote a little about him a long time ago...

Random notes

• What would be served at the dinner? Would it be best if Lugosi was the host? He was known for hosting extravagant dinners.
• Victoria Price's website is Daily Practice of Joy, which is something we really need in this moment.
• Elisabeth Moss is portraying Shirley Jackson in a movie that's set to be released this summer. If we have movies in theaters this summer.
• Edward Parnell has written about going in search of William Hope Hodgson's house. The tale of that journey appears in Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country (Shelfie #13) and also in an article for the November 2019 issue of Fortean Times.

Stay-at-home shelfie #48

Hoo boy, this is just an awful photo. Maybe the worst of the lot. I think I'll take this one as the mulligan and instead present this better photograph to document the last of the cardboard-box shelves...

That's better, I think. There are some hardcovers here, including the two volumes of The Manuscript Found in Saragossa that were translated by Elizabeth Abbott in the 1960s: The Saragossa Manuscript and The New Decameron. Out of the Unknown was a post in 2018 and Lost Tribes & Sunken Continents was featured in 2016. And then there are the Scholastic books. Many of these have been featured, with their wonderful and nostalgia-evoking cover art, on Papergreat over the years. Click on the Scholastic books label, with its 40+ posts, to browse back through all of them at your leisure.

Stay-at-home shelfie #47

The third cardboard box from the left on the shelf above my desk is 100% double-shelved with paperbacks, almost entirely from the realms of fantasy and science-fiction. Many of these have been posts over the years. I suspect there are future posts lurking in there, too. Instead of naming names or commenting on any of them — that could take a very long time — I'll just let you roam your eyes over the shelves and pretend you're at your favorite bookstore. (You can click on the photos for larger images, so you don't have to squint.)

Stay-at-home shelfie #46

It's The Three Investigators!

I've mentioned my extreme fondness for this series in several posts, so I'll send you on tour of links related to Jupiter Jones, Peter Crenshaw, Bob Andrews, and, in the best versions of these books, Alfred Hitchcock.

• You never know what you'll find in the "FREE" boxes
• The Three Investigators #1: The Secret of Terror Castle
• Great links: Groovy Lego set based on "The Three Investigators"
• Thoughts on collections and their inevitable dispersal

And, as always, Seth T. Smolinske's website is the place to go to learn all about this series. He's also on Facebook.