Whatcha reading?

[Silent Majority]

13) We Have Always Lived In the Castle - Shirley Jackson. 1962. Audiobook. A brilliant and brilliantly unsettling novel about a twisted wealthy family, wrapped in mental ill health, shunned by the entire town due to a murder of six years previously. So well written and brought to a slow boil where the set-up, bad at the start, grows increasingly and unbearably worse. You live in the narrator's mind and the storytelling is so perfectly and subtly unfurled that you don't wish to the accept the miserable inevitability of it all til it's all too late.

[Flex]

13) We Have Always Lived In the Castle - Shirley Jackson. 1962. Audiobook. A brilliant and brilliantly unsettling novel about a twisted wealthy family, wrapped in mental ill health, shunned by the entire town due to a murder of six years previously. So well written and brought to a slow boil where the set-up, bad at the start, grows increasingly and unbearably worse. You live in the narrator's mind and the storytelling is so perfectly and subtly unfurled that you don't wish to the accept the miserable inevitability of it all til it's all too late.

I saw the movie, didn't actually catch it was a shirley jackson book. I'll definitely be checking this out.

[Silent Majority]

13) We Have Always Lived In the Castle - Shirley Jackson. 1962. Audiobook. A brilliant and brilliantly unsettling novel about a twisted wealthy family, wrapped in mental ill health, shunned by the entire town due to a murder of six years previously. So well written and brought to a slow boil where the set-up, bad at the start, grows increasingly and unbearably worse. You live in the narrator's mind and the storytelling is so perfectly and subtly unfurled that you don't wish to the accept the miserable inevitability of it all til it's all too late.

I saw the movie, didn't actually catch it was a shirley jackson book. I'll definitely be checking this out.

How was the movie?

[Flex]

How was the movie?

It was a few years ago, but I remember it being pretty good. No idea how much it follows the book, obvs, but one of those spookier and more unsettling than, like, jump scares and whatnot.

[Silent Majority]

How was the movie?

It was a few years ago, but I remember it being pretty good. No idea how much it follows the book, obvs, but one of those spookier and more unsettling than, like, jump scares and whatnot.

Will probably throw that on one of these days.

[Kory]

This is probably a hell of a longshot, but does anyone have any tips on where to go online to search for used books by publisher and date? I'm looking for a specific printing of a series of JG Ballard's books, but whenever I find one on eBay or something, they're just using the old cover image but are selling the new printing with a different cover. I have 5 of the series I'm looking for and I want to fill in the collection with the others from the same series so they look uniform on my shelf, but there's no real way to make sure I'm getting what I'm looking for unless I click into each listing and hope that it has any publisher info—and even then I'm not guaranteed because nobody pays attention to that stuff when they're listing their books for sale, the author and title is all that matters to them. It doesn't help that it's a UK printing either, so I'm checking all the ebay.co.uk type URLs.

I'd go to abebooks.com, and if you find a promising lead, contact the vendor to doublecheck it's the exact edition you want.

Just want to bitch real quick about what a pain this is. Pretty much everyone on abebooks is just a front for some warehouse that they don't have any contact with and can't give me any information, even whether the damn book is published in the year I'm looking for. Lots of misinformation from sellers on this site, almost exclusively.

[Dr. Medulla]

This is probably a hell of a longshot, but does anyone have any tips on where to go online to search for used books by publisher and date? I'm looking for a specific printing of a series of JG Ballard's books, but whenever I find one on eBay or something, they're just using the old cover image but are selling the new printing with a different cover. I have 5 of the series I'm looking for and I want to fill in the collection with the others from the same series so they look uniform on my shelf, but there's no real way to make sure I'm getting what I'm looking for unless I click into each listing and hope that it has any publisher info—and even then I'm not guaranteed because nobody pays attention to that stuff when they're listing their books for sale, the author and title is all that matters to them. It doesn't help that it's a UK printing either, so I'm checking all the ebay.co.uk type URLs.

I'd go to abebooks.com, and if you find a promising lead, contact the vendor to doublecheck it's the exact edition you want.

Just want to bitch real quick about what a pain this is. Pretty much everyone on abebooks is just a front for some warehouse that they don't have any contact with and can't give me any information, even whether the damn book is published in the year I'm looking for. Lots of misinformation from sellers on this site, almost exclusively.

That's a real shame. My understanding is that abe has been salvation for a lot of antiquarian shops, where people know their stock and the like.

Another thought: Do you have the ISBN for the version you want? If so, could you search that way?

[Kory]

This is probably a hell of a longshot, but does anyone have any tips on where to go online to search for used books by publisher and date? I'm looking for a specific printing of a series of JG Ballard's books, but whenever I find one on eBay or something, they're just using the old cover image but are selling the new printing with a different cover. I have 5 of the series I'm looking for and I want to fill in the collection with the others from the same series so they look uniform on my shelf, but there's no real way to make sure I'm getting what I'm looking for unless I click into each listing and hope that it has any publisher info—and even then I'm not guaranteed because nobody pays attention to that stuff when they're listing their books for sale, the author and title is all that matters to them. It doesn't help that it's a UK printing either, so I'm checking all the ebay.co.uk type URLs.

I'd go to abebooks.com, and if you find a promising lead, contact the vendor to doublecheck it's the exact edition you want.

Just want to bitch real quick about what a pain this is. Pretty much everyone on abebooks is just a front for some warehouse that they don't have any contact with and can't give me any information, even whether the damn book is published in the year I'm looking for. Lots of misinformation from sellers on this site, almost exclusively.

That's a real shame. My understanding is that abe has been salvation for a lot of antiquarian shops, where people know their stock and the like.

Another thought: Do you have the ISBN for the version you want? If so, could you search that way?

In my endless searches, it seems to me that if a publisher reprints a book with a different cover, they use the same ISBN. Even the images at https://isbnsearch.org/ are different from the search results to when you click in to get more info about the book in question. I think I'm going to have to just start cold-calling used bookstores and seeing if they have these things.

[Dr. Medulla]

This is probably a hell of a longshot, but does anyone have any tips on where to go online to search for used books by publisher and date? I'm looking for a specific printing of a series of JG Ballard's books, but whenever I find one on eBay or something, they're just using the old cover image but are selling the new printing with a different cover. I have 5 of the series I'm looking for and I want to fill in the collection with the others from the same series so they look uniform on my shelf, but there's no real way to make sure I'm getting what I'm looking for unless I click into each listing and hope that it has any publisher info—and even then I'm not guaranteed because nobody pays attention to that stuff when they're listing their books for sale, the author and title is all that matters to them. It doesn't help that it's a UK printing either, so I'm checking all the ebay.co.uk type URLs.

I'd go to abebooks.com, and if you find a promising lead, contact the vendor to doublecheck it's the exact edition you want.

Just want to bitch real quick about what a pain this is. Pretty much everyone on abebooks is just a front for some warehouse that they don't have any contact with and can't give me any information, even whether the damn book is published in the year I'm looking for. Lots of misinformation from sellers on this site, almost exclusively.

That's a real shame. My understanding is that abe has been salvation for a lot of antiquarian shops, where people know their stock and the like.

Another thought: Do you have the ISBN for the version you want? If so, could you search that way?

In my endless searches, it seems to me that if a publisher reprints a book with a different cover, they use the same ISBN. Even the images at https://isbnsearch.org/ are different from the search results to when you click in to get more info about the book in question. I think I'm going to have to just start cold-calling used bookstores and seeing if they have these things.

Yeah, I don't think it's the cover that matters in this but the specific typesetting for that edition—the fonts, pagination, and all that. But you'd think there would be a middle-man website/search engine for specific editions or printings, something that antiquarians would link up to.

[Kory]

I'd go to abebooks.com, and if you find a promising lead, contact the vendor to doublecheck it's the exact edition you want.

Just want to bitch real quick about what a pain this is. Pretty much everyone on abebooks is just a front for some warehouse that they don't have any contact with and can't give me any information, even whether the damn book is published in the year I'm looking for. Lots of misinformation from sellers on this site, almost exclusively.

That's a real shame. My understanding is that abe has been salvation for a lot of antiquarian shops, where people know their stock and the like.

Another thought: Do you have the ISBN for the version you want? If so, could you search that way?

In my endless searches, it seems to me that if a publisher reprints a book with a different cover, they use the same ISBN. Even the images at https://isbnsearch.org/ are different from the search results to when you click in to get more info about the book in question. I think I'm going to have to just start cold-calling used bookstores and seeing if they have these things.

Yeah, I don't think it's the cover that matters in this but the specific typesetting for that edition—the fonts, pagination, and all that. But you'd think there would be a middle-man website/search engine for specific editions or printings, something that antiquarians would link up to.

I've had good luck with my Philip Roth collection, but I was looking for first editions in that case. It may just be that with paperbacks, sellers think people don't care which cover they have.

[Dr. Medulla]

Just want to bitch real quick about what a pain this is. Pretty much everyone on abebooks is just a front for some warehouse that they don't have any contact with and can't give me any information, even whether the damn book is published in the year I'm looking for. Lots of misinformation from sellers on this site, almost exclusively.

That's a real shame. My understanding is that abe has been salvation for a lot of antiquarian shops, where people know their stock and the like.

Another thought: Do you have the ISBN for the version you want? If so, could you search that way?

In my endless searches, it seems to me that if a publisher reprints a book with a different cover, they use the same ISBN. Even the images at https://isbnsearch.org/ are different from the search results to when you click in to get more info about the book in question. I think I'm going to have to just start cold-calling used bookstores and seeing if they have these things.

Yeah, I don't think it's the cover that matters in this but the specific typesetting for that edition—the fonts, pagination, and all that. But you'd think there would be a middle-man website/search engine for specific editions or printings, something that antiquarians would link up to.

I've had good luck with my Philip Roth collection, but I was looking for first editions in that case. It may just be that with paperbacks, sellers think people don't care which cover they have.

Depends on the time period. When I was looking for j.d. paperbacks from the 50s for my research, I was dealing with anal collectors. And they seemed to be annoyed when I said that I didn't care about condition and all that—I just wanted the damned book to read.

[Kory]

That's a real shame. My understanding is that abe has been salvation for a lot of antiquarian shops, where people know their stock and the like.

Another thought: Do you have the ISBN for the version you want? If so, could you search that way?

In my endless searches, it seems to me that if a publisher reprints a book with a different cover, they use the same ISBN. Even the images at https://isbnsearch.org/ are different from the search results to when you click in to get more info about the book in question. I think I'm going to have to just start cold-calling used bookstores and seeing if they have these things.

Yeah, I don't think it's the cover that matters in this but the specific typesetting for that edition—the fonts, pagination, and all that. But you'd think there would be a middle-man website/search engine for specific editions or printings, something that antiquarians would link up to.

I've had good luck with my Philip Roth collection, but I was looking for first editions in that case. It may just be that with paperbacks, sellers think people don't care which cover they have.

Depends on the time period. When I was looking for j.d. paperbacks from the 50s for my research, I was dealing with anal collectors. And they seemed to be annoyed when I said that I didn't care about condition and all that—I just wanted the damned book to read.

That's what makes it weird that these are so rare. They're from 2006–2008 mostly, so they should be reasonably easy to find.

[Dr. Medulla]

In my endless searches, it seems to me that if a publisher reprints a book with a different cover, they use the same ISBN. Even the images at https://isbnsearch.org/ are different from the search results to when you click in to get more info about the book in question. I think I'm going to have to just start cold-calling used bookstores and seeing if they have these things.

Yeah, I don't think it's the cover that matters in this but the specific typesetting for that edition—the fonts, pagination, and all that. But you'd think there would be a middle-man website/search engine for specific editions or printings, something that antiquarians would link up to.

I've had good luck with my Philip Roth collection, but I was looking for first editions in that case. It may just be that with paperbacks, sellers think people don't care which cover they have.

Depends on the time period. When I was looking for j.d. paperbacks from the 50s for my research, I was dealing with anal collectors. And they seemed to be annoyed when I said that I didn't care about condition and all that—I just wanted the damned book to read.

That's what makes it weird that these are so rare. They're from 2006–2008 mostly, so they should be reasonably easy to find.

That's really strange! Have you tried contacting the publisher to if there are still copies in stock with a distributor? Explain the difficulty that you're having tracking them down. Maybe you get lucky and make contact with someone who is keen on some detective work.

[Kory]

Yeah, I don't think it's the cover that matters in this but the specific typesetting for that edition—the fonts, pagination, and all that. But you'd think there would be a middle-man website/search engine for specific editions or printings, something that antiquarians would link up to.

I've had good luck with my Philip Roth collection, but I was looking for first editions in that case. It may just be that with paperbacks, sellers think people don't care which cover they have.

Depends on the time period. When I was looking for j.d. paperbacks from the 50s for my research, I was dealing with anal collectors. And they seemed to be annoyed when I said that I didn't care about condition and all that—I just wanted the damned book to read.

That's what makes it weird that these are so rare. They're from 2006–2008 mostly, so they should be reasonably easy to find.

That's really strange! Have you tried contacting the publisher to if there are still copies in stock with a distributor? Explain the difficulty that you're having tracking them down. Maybe you get lucky and make contact with someone who is keen on some detective work.

Yeah I sent an email to Harper UK. I don't expect to hear back, but it was worth a shot at least. I also wound up joining a Ballard fans FB group, some people there had some interesting ideas, most of which boil down to me just emailing UK bookshops and seeing if they have anything I'm looking for.

[Dr. Medulla]

I've had good luck with my Philip Roth collection, but I was looking for first editions in that case. It may just be that with paperbacks, sellers think people don't care which cover they have.

Depends on the time period. When I was looking for j.d. paperbacks from the 50s for my research, I was dealing with anal collectors. And they seemed to be annoyed when I said that I didn't care about condition and all that—I just wanted the damned book to read.

That's what makes it weird that these are so rare. They're from 2006–2008 mostly, so they should be reasonably easy to find.

That's really strange! Have you tried contacting the publisher to if there are still copies in stock with a distributor? Explain the difficulty that you're having tracking them down. Maybe you get lucky and make contact with someone who is keen on some detective work.

Yeah I sent an email to Harper UK. I don't expect to hear back, but it was worth a shot at least. I also wound up joining a Ballard fans FB group, some people there had some interesting ideas, most of which boil down to me just emailing UK bookshops and seeing if they have anything I'm looking for.

I'm kinda invested now in how this turns out.