I was bookhunting recently with the Mom unit when we came across some neat vintage mysteries.  These were editions I hadn’t seen before.  (Mom, of course, had, being an avid mystery reader, especially of anything written before 1950.) Seems the idea of a subscription book “club” is not a very recent idea after all – Doubleday had their own version for over 60 years, starting back in the 1920s.  I just hadn’t run across them before.

So I did a little research: Daniel Longwell, a man who worked his way up through the ranks of Doubleday, Doran from night clerk at the Doubleday store to advertising manager, came up with the idea of Doubleday’s Crime Club after visiting England back in the 1920s. Across the pond, the top mystery fiction writers were members of The Detection Club where only the best stories were published, and Longwell realized that America needed something similar to help increase US mystery novel sales.
continue reading "1928: A Very Good Year for Mysteries"

My mother got me hooked at a very early age on reading just about anything and everything (except for romance books which she considers to this day to be beneath her notice.) She, herself, was taught to read by age 3 such novels as JANE EYRE and THE GRAPES OF WRATH by her mother (possibly to get her out of grandma’s hair, but who am I to guess at grandma’s motives…? LOL)

I, myself, however, wasn’t able to read such lofty books until I was about 6 – guess that makes me a bit of a late bloomer, eh? (Seems I tested out at 12th grade reading level in 2nd grade – was it all the reading Mom got me hooked on at such an early age that made me that smart or was I smart to begin with. Hummmm.)

Now I mostly read for pleasure with my favorites being SCI FI, Mysteries/Thrillers, Biography, Star Wars related, Star Trek related, some Fantasy and even a few Romance books to mix it up. (So there, Mom!) Because she and I don’t overlap much (if at all) on our books of choice, the house is now threatening to buckle from the books bulging out the back. (At least it seems that way when you have as many books as we do between just the two of us and not enough shelves or closet space or floor space, in our case.)

The remedy? Sell a few of them off! At least, the duplicates to begin with. Then you sell the ones you only felt like reading once, but just couldn’t justify enough space for (without having to buy another home to house them all in, that is). Then you start hunting for books to sell. Which seems to only increase, not decrease, the numbers of books around you. Ummm – oooops. And the madness continues!!! (Anyone know a good 12-step biblioholics program you can recommend?)

The neat thing about selling books is that I’ve been exposing myself – no, not that kind! – to authors and genres I might not have read before, such as paranormal romance books, something I didn’t even know existed until researching who’s popular (and who’s not), and what other people are reading. I’ve expanded my biblio horizons which can only be for the good. (Unless you ask Mom, who’s competing for the same book storing space as I.)

So here’s just an idea of the things I read (and sell):