Half-price Fables

woodcut.jpg I went to Half Price Books on Fri­day and man­aged to not buy the whole store. Instead I bought three illus­trat­ed books of fables and folk­tales. All brand new and all rather cheap.

I got a cel­lo­phane jack­et­ed Aesop’s fables that has pen and ink illus­tra­tions that are almost iden­ti­cal to the ones in the fairy tale books I’ve had since I was a wee thing. They are all some­what droll and have a neo-medieval qual­i­ty to them. What­ev­er that means. The oth­er two books are col­lec­tions of eth­nic folk­tales, one from the Ukraine and one from Bohemia. Both con­tain wood­cuts that are fan­tas­tic. I sup­pose I’ve always har­bored a secret love for books with these sim­ple types of illus­tra­tion. Most of it is prob­a­bly nos­tal­gia val­ue, but in I like it all the same.

I also bought The Man Who Fell To Earth, which I will read and then final­ly scrounge around until I can find a copy of the movie star­ring David Bowie to watch. None of this is mak­ing much sense but I just want­ed to gib­ber it down before I did­n’t.

*Late Sat­ur­day*

I went to Taste of Tremont, and have decid­ed that it is where I want to move when me lease ends. The library was sell­ing their with­drawn books for $4 a bag so I stocked up on stuff I’ve nev­er heard of but that is worth the shot any­way. I got a cou­ple of poet­ry books, a cou­ple of fan­ta­sy books and a cou­ple of books for Liam and Anne, who had invit­ed me along. There were approx­i­mate­ly too many pret­ty girls with lame look­ing guys on their arms.

7 thoughts on “Half-price Fables”

  3. that movie has so very very lit­tle plot. david bowie walks around look­ing pret­ty and occa­sion­al­ly get­ting naked, and there’s some vague theme of a stranger in a strange land who is unable to fit in because… well… he’s a space man.

  4. hmm, i dun­no if i want to see a naked David Bowie, even if he is my idol.

    the tights he wore in Labyrinth were dis­turb­ing enough.

  5. Oh, I love thee Half-Price-Books.
    9 out of 10 of my cook­books come from there.

    You know what’s awe­some. All their paper­backs are half off cov­er price. So, look for the ones which were pub­lished back in the 50’s to 70’s. The retail price was like 0.50 or 0.75, so you can get ’em for almost noth­ing.

  7. yeah, i got The Man Who Fell to Earth for 1.13. flea mar­ket book stalls still win though in the price to qual­i­ty ratio.

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