dreams and bees

Enjoyed guest starring in Aaron's Dreamlands game, travelling along the Oukranos, seeking a desperate cure to my cursed existence. It was also fun to see newtoniancat in action, converting a soda can into a hotdog grill. Not to mention clambering about the Old Zoo. The area is overshadowed by an attention-grabbing peak. There's a trail to the peak, and I found an interesting LA Times blog covering some of the history of Bee Rock, including a suicide leap from the rock in 1944.

book fair

Oh the things I could not afford. There were several that were close, though...

The copy of The Spy by Thea von Harbau (aka the source material for her husband Fritz Lang's Spione/Spies)
The copy of Poe's Tales from the 30s.
The stories of King Arthur with Rackham illustrations.
The copy of CAS' Spells & Philtres.

In the decidedly not close category were

Since book-to-film was the theme of the show, there were a lot of 'films' present at the show. As usual, there were oodles of The Big Sleeps and Maltese Falcons (a mere $45,000 for a pristine copy of the latter). But there were a couple booksellers with rarer things like the aforementioned Spies, as well as a Cat and the Canary, and The Bat.

Some Velikovsky correspondence.

A history of California published in 1854, including a description of the author's travel from NYC to SF via Nicaragua. I was interested, but there was one too many zeroes at the end of the price.

One seller had an amazing run of Fantomas books.

The Levack PKD bibliography from '81, signed by PKD. They also had some rare UK hardcovers of PKD's books (intended for libraries) from Dick's personal library that he had turned over to Levack for the bibliography.

A 4th Folio printing of HAMLET, RPINCE OF DENMARK [sic]

As we get more and more ridiculous...

Then there was the print of Einstein sticking his tongue out. Apparently Al had a few of these printed up for himself. And this one was inscribed by him.

A copy of King Kong. Originally Ray Bradbury's copy, he gave it to Forry Ackerman long long ago. Forry got it signed by Fay Wray, Ray Harryhousen, and a half dozen other people involved in the film. How can you put a price on such a thing? Well, they didn't, and I didn't ask.

Another seller had one of Papa's leather vests.

Not as much Salinger as I expected, but still quite a bit.