Great Quotes From Lunch.

I can't decide between the thunder and the storm.

KT, January 11, 2020

Admittedly, it's only about burger choices at the Storm Crow, but gosh, it certainly sounds epic.

- Sid

"It's a Christmas miracle!"

On Thursday, I joined Karli's family in celebrating her mother's birthday at Hy's Steak House. (Which I found to be an unexpected choice of venue, given that both Karli's mother and stepfather are vegetarians, but apparently they have some good options for the no-meat crowd.)

While we were waiting for our drinks to arrive, Karli's sister Lisa presented us with a surprise gift, which she had picked up at The Flame, a monthly storytelling series based around true personal stories that she had attended the day before.

To our surprise, it was a copy of the Epic Yarns version of A New Hope, which Karli had originally wanted to give me for Christmas, but had been unable to locate, and ended up substituting The Empire Strikes Back in its place.  It turned out that Lisa had attended The Authors Edition of The Flame, and Epic Yarns co-creator Holman Wang had been among the local authors who spoke that night.  Lisa, who was completely unaware that A New Hope had been on Karli's shopping list*, or that I had attended Holman's talk at the Vancouver Writers Fest*, spontaneously decided to buy us a copy of the first Star Wars book from Mr. Wang, thereby providing an unexpectedly happy postscript to the holiday season.

Now that I have the first two, I decided that it made sense to get the third book in the Epic Yarns series - after all, it's a trilogy - and just out of curiousity, checked on A New Hope while I was on Amazon.ca.  Not only was it out of stock, but third-party sellers had apparently decided that if Amazon™ didn't have it, they could charge as much as they wanted, with prices for new copies set at an oddly consistent $69.61.

 

Fortunately, Amazon™ did have the Wang brothers' take on The Return of the Jedi in stock, and I ordered a copy, thereby completing the set.  Oh, and other book sellers?  List price is $14.95 - just sayin'.

- Sid

* Sadly, it would appear that Lisa is not part of The Infinite Revolution's readership.

Hunting for Books: Fit the First

"For the Snark's a peculiar creature, that won't
Be caught in a commonplace way.
Do all that you know, and try all that you don't:
Not a chance must be wasted to-day!"

Lewis Caroll, The Hunting of the Snark

I started my hunt for replacement books on a rainy December 31st in downtown Victoria with a visit to Russell Books, a large new and used bookstore which had just recently moved to a new location on Fort Street.  I'd made a reasonable start on my book cataloguing project and part of the result was a list of almost a hundred timeworn books that I wanted to update with less damaged copies, some of which I hoped to find at Russell.

In my mind, I imagined toting an armful or two of books to the checkout, and had already mentally budgeted for a first installment of purchases, but to my mild surprise, I was only able to find two books out of my list of 95.  Feeling a bit disappointed, I didn't even buy those two texts, thinking that I would rather buy in bulk than take a piecemeal approach to the hunt.

My next stop was Bastion Books, a used book shop which specializes more in rare books, and has a substantially smaller science fiction and fantasy collection as a result.  In spite of which, I was able to find three or four of the books on my list, but their condition was only marginally better than the ones I was replacing.

However, although I hadn't made a start on listing my Ace Doubles yet, I selected one that I was certain was in better shape than the copy on my shelves, and spotted two that I was confident I didn't already own.  I also picked up a book by Lloyd Biggle Jr. - because why would you not want to buy a book by someone named Biggle?

The young woman on the checkout desk smiled when she saw my selections, and as she began to log their titles*, mentioned that she’d just watched a movie the night before in which the credits had been done with classic SF covers as backgrounds.

Realizing that my carry bag was not waterproof, I cautiously asked if she might have a plastic bag - a bit of a hot button question in Victoria, which banned single use plastic bags in 2018.  To my relief, she was able to dig out a small contraband bag that perfectly matched my purchases, and taped it closed as well - full points to Bastion for customer service.

In conversation while she was doing this, I mentioned my mostly unsuccessful quest and commented that I wasn’t looking for anything particularly esoteric, at least by my standards, and was surprised that I didn't see more matches for my well-worn existing copies.

She made a bit of a moue with her mouth and shrugged, then delivered the epitaph of the science fiction paperback.

"They really weren’t terribly well made in the first place.”

She suggested that I pay a visit to the Cavity Curiousity Shop, which she said had an excellent selection of science fiction, in spite of the fact that they don’t list themselves as a book store, which kept most casual shoppers from going there.

After a brief look at Google Maps™, I hopefully hiked the kilometer and a half to Cavity's location, only to discover that they were closed for the holiday season - although they certainly had an intriguing window display.  Thwarted on all fronts and wet to the knee, I trudged back to our borrowed apartment to seek solace in hot tea, a sausage roll, and dry jeans.

On paper, my day looked like a failure, but I have to say that in practise, I rather enjoyed it.  It gave direction to my shopping, took me to a couple of new locations, and made me really look at the books on display.  Apparently you can have a good day of fishing even if you don't get anything on the hook.

- Sid

* This is a thing that old school book shops traditionally do to record their sales.