Adventures in L-Space
Oct. 30th, 2009 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrI love books. I love reading them, and I love being around them. As a kid and teenager I used to spend hours in libraries just for the happy being-around-books feeling, and so of course fell in love with unisfa and spent hours there too.
This afternoon, having finished my dress I put it on, and since I didn't have the energy for Plan A, going to Borders and Target (both of whom are having sales), I implemented Plan B, picking up a reserved book from the library.
The last time I went to the library I went the long way home since it has a shallower hill and discovered a new second hand bookshop which was, tragically, closed. So today I went the long way again and happily, it was open.
I wasn't expecting to find anything since it's tiny and mostly old stuff. The owner said to another guy "It's always hard telling people we're closing" and so I said "Are you closing?" not too fussed about going. "Well..would you mind waiting here twenty minutes or so? We have to go pick something up." Not having any plans, I said yes.
It tuns out that being totally alone in a strange bookshop deeply appeals to some deep part of me, it was awesome. The shop is suitably odd, too, with shelves either half full or overflowing with all sorts of random books with no consistent order (Georgette Heyer and Michael Moore on the same shelf?) along with strange things like chunks of pyrite and screwdrivers and piled bookends and statues. I couldn't find anything in the science fiction section (though I considered a few of them) and there seemed not to be a romance section so I was looking through the non-fiction section without much enthusiasm when I found it. Platinum Grit Volume 8. A comic I have been looking for since 1996.
I got into Platinum Grit when I came across Volume 1 at the newsagent at the busstop on the way home from highschool. It's a weird little Australian comic whose sense of humour was perfect for me at that age, but being both kind of poor and a total skinflint I always procrastinated about spending the OMG THREE DOLLARS each issue cost. And then, around the time I was putting off buying issue eight, I couldn't find it any more! Anywhere! I managed to get I think issue 9 from a royal show bag of all places, but that was it until I found it online a few years later (and then couldn't bring myself to spend the OMG TWENTY DOLLARS to buy the rest in print-on-demand book form) I think I might have ordered some of the back issues from somewhere. Anyway! I couldn't remember if I had this issue but coming across it made me all happy so I decided to buy it for old times sake.
Which meant I couldn't leave.
So I waited. And waited. I eventually found the Georgette-Heyer-and-Michael-Moore-etc shelf and picked up Frederika which I've heard is good. Then I sat and skimmed some reprints of 1940s newspapers, and helped a woman in a wheelchair who couldn't get up the step look for a book, and read some of my library book (another racist regency romance, bah). Eventually I decided to go to an ATM since I didn't have any money, and just as I came back the owner returned. I thought he might be annoyed I left the store unattended but he was just really apologetic for taking so long, and gave me the comic AND the book for free. Huzzah!
And afaict I don't have issue 8, and finding the comic reminded me to look them up and discover the books are now on Amazon. So yay :) (It's an indication of how annoying I find the flash interface that I'd prefer to wait to buy the next issues than read them for free online)
This afternoon, having finished my dress I put it on, and since I didn't have the energy for Plan A, going to Borders and Target (both of whom are having sales), I implemented Plan B, picking up a reserved book from the library.
The last time I went to the library I went the long way home since it has a shallower hill and discovered a new second hand bookshop which was, tragically, closed. So today I went the long way again and happily, it was open.
I wasn't expecting to find anything since it's tiny and mostly old stuff. The owner said to another guy "It's always hard telling people we're closing" and so I said "Are you closing?" not too fussed about going. "Well..would you mind waiting here twenty minutes or so? We have to go pick something up." Not having any plans, I said yes.
It tuns out that being totally alone in a strange bookshop deeply appeals to some deep part of me, it was awesome. The shop is suitably odd, too, with shelves either half full or overflowing with all sorts of random books with no consistent order (Georgette Heyer and Michael Moore on the same shelf?) along with strange things like chunks of pyrite and screwdrivers and piled bookends and statues. I couldn't find anything in the science fiction section (though I considered a few of them) and there seemed not to be a romance section so I was looking through the non-fiction section without much enthusiasm when I found it. Platinum Grit Volume 8. A comic I have been looking for since 1996.
I got into Platinum Grit when I came across Volume 1 at the newsagent at the busstop on the way home from highschool. It's a weird little Australian comic whose sense of humour was perfect for me at that age, but being both kind of poor and a total skinflint I always procrastinated about spending the OMG THREE DOLLARS each issue cost. And then, around the time I was putting off buying issue eight, I couldn't find it any more! Anywhere! I managed to get I think issue 9 from a royal show bag of all places, but that was it until I found it online a few years later (and then couldn't bring myself to spend the OMG TWENTY DOLLARS to buy the rest in print-on-demand book form) I think I might have ordered some of the back issues from somewhere. Anyway! I couldn't remember if I had this issue but coming across it made me all happy so I decided to buy it for old times sake.
Which meant I couldn't leave.
So I waited. And waited. I eventually found the Georgette-Heyer-and-Michael-Moore-etc shelf and picked up Frederika which I've heard is good. Then I sat and skimmed some reprints of 1940s newspapers, and helped a woman in a wheelchair who couldn't get up the step look for a book, and read some of my library book (another racist regency romance, bah). Eventually I decided to go to an ATM since I didn't have any money, and just as I came back the owner returned. I thought he might be annoyed I left the store unattended but he was just really apologetic for taking so long, and gave me the comic AND the book for free. Huzzah!
And afaict I don't have issue 8, and finding the comic reminded me to look them up and discover the books are now on Amazon. So yay :) (It's an indication of how annoying I find the flash interface that I'd prefer to wait to buy the next issues than read them for free online)
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 11:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 11:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 12:31 pm (UTC)IIRC, I picked up a bundle of PGs in the original format from a Swancon auction for something insultingly cheap. ~#1 - 12, and I'm pretty sure at least one of those is signed. ;)
Of course, this was probably 8-10 years ago...
no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 01:14 pm (UTC)The best example I have is finding a particular edition of Leiber's "Swords Against Death" once after years of looking - of course Millennium ruined that by reprinting it in a nice new ed, but eh.
It's a somehow immensely fulfilling moment that's triggered from nowhere.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 11:18 am (UTC)