This past week was one of those weeks where we were able to dig into some older boxes we’d been unable to process because of the madness of life. Moving some unprocessed stock from our store to our second location gave us the opportunity to just stretch out and take a little adventure through the “I’ll-Get-to-it-Soon” wing of our bookselling lives. You’re stacking them up in a new room, after all, and opening those packaged tops is so exciting. You open it up and then, wow, an Ojibway dictionary? We didn’t even know we had that!
Being laterally organized offers up these mysteries regularly. Remember that guy who came in like months ago with just Don Dellilo and hard-boiled detective fiction? There are his books! We had packed them in boxes for some reason. Remember that eleven-volume set of Will Durant’s Story of Civilization we promised ourselves we’d get catalogued for Christmas? We “remember” it in the way you “remember” a pile of laundry. It is there but it also not there.
It is also a figment of the future.
Unexpectedly too, a customer that we love came in with three boss collectible occult books. One of them is very scarce, in that the secret order written about in its unusual pages sued the estate of the author for revealing their dark secrets. All copies not sold were taken off the market. These are SEX RITUALS too, so they are sought after by a select group of horny magicians.
We now have a copy of that book in our collection.
One other of the three is the complete magical records of British occultist John Dee taken from copies in the British and Bodleian libraries. These are painstakingly reproduced, we understand, and this two volume set is an impressive limited edition.
The third of the three is an affordable (relatively) collectible copy of Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practice.
Add to this, our puppers are now coming to our new office and the mild-mannered booklife has been activated by hourly requests to throw a stuffed chicken. It’s a stuffed chicken TOY fortunately, and not an actual stuffed chicken. You can get a stuffed chicken locally through some antique dealers. We can happily put you in touch with them if that’s your kind of thing.
Until next week be well. Be saucy. Be smart.
Much love,
Jason and Vanessa
