inkandbooknotes

[inkandbooknotes]

Personal Find: Lost in the City

Book:

Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones published by Harper Perennial in 1993.

Inscription:

"The only man I know tonight who has read Tax Notes. Best wishes! Edward P. Jones

2-18-94

[inkandbooknotes]

First Edition Find: Maps and Legends

Found:

Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands by Michael Chabon, first edition published by McSweeney's in 2008

First sentence:

"Entertainment has a bad name."

Last sentence:

"It is along the knife-narrow borderland between those two kingdoms, between the Empire of Lies and the Republic of Truth, more than along any other frontier on the map of existence, that Trickster makes his wandering way, and either comes to grief or to finds his supper, his treasure, his fate.

'Maybe next time you're there,' I told the lady before I signed my name across the title page of another pack of lies. 'Check it out.'

Dust jacket description:

"The first book of nonfiction from the author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Wonder Boys."

[inkandbooknotes]

First Edition Find: The White Album

Found:

The White Album by Joan Didion, published by Simon & Schuster in 1979

First sentence:

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live."

Last sentence:

"The fire had come to within 125 feet of the property, then stopped or turned or been beaten back, it was hard to tell which. In any case it was no longer our house."

Dust jacket description:

"Joan Didion's novels and essays have earned her a unique reputation as one of hte finest writers in America, a gifted observer and interpreter of American doubts, feelings and realities, through whose eyes we suddenly perceive the truth about ourselves and our times. Her Slouching Towards Bethlehem mirrored a whole generation so precisely that it has become a classic. Now, in The White Album, Joan Didion focuses on the world in which she -- and we -- now live, examining those vibrations and fears that began in the late Sixties, that age of self-discovery and belief in the possibility of change whose spiritual center was California, Didion's homeland in fact and spirit.

Brilliantly, with a commanding sureness of mood and language and a lucid, shrewd intelligence, she exposes the realities an dreams of her own special landscape. The White Album is a mosaic of a time, a mosaic that includes, among other bizarre artifiacts and personalities, the dark journeys and impulses of the Manson Family and the Ferguson brothers, the story of Bishop James Pike, and of John Paul Getty's museum, the biker cult, the saga of the California governor's mansions, the romance of water in an arid landscape, the swirl of confusion of the Sixties, and the experience of getting away--to Bogotá, to Las Vegas, the Islands, the road or simply to bed--and coming home again. Not since Slouching Towards Bethlehem has there been a book which so accurately told us where we've been--and how we got there."

[inkandbooknotes]

First Edition Find: Murder in the Dark

Found:

Murder in the Dark: Short Fictions and Prose Poems by Margaret Atwood, published by Coach House Press in 1983

First sentence:

"The first thing I can remember is a blue line."

Last sentence:

"After that there are no more instructions because there is no more choice. You see. You see."

Back cover description:

"Murder in the Dark is Margaret Atwood's seventh work of fiction or her tenth work of poetry, depending on how you slice it. These short prose poems range from fictionalized autobiography through parable through prose-poetry, mini-romance and mini-science fiction. While Murder in the Dark is accessible and entertaining, it is also experimental, an out-of-the-ordinary sampling. Includes 'Making Poison,' 'Women's Novels,' 'Liking Men' and many more..."

[inkandbooknotes]

First Edition Find: The Rocky Horror Picture Show Book

Found:

The Rocky Horror Picture Show Book by Bill Henkin, first edition published by Hawthorn Books, Inc. in 1979

Dedication page:

"To absent friends"

First sentence:

"It seemed a fairly ordinary October, in 1974, when the cast and crew began to film The Rocky Horror Picture Show at England's Bray Studios--where such horror classics as The Curse of Frankenstein; The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb; and The Horror of Dracula had been made by Hammer Productions--and on location in the castle used by General Charles de Gaulle as a refuge during World War II."

Last sentence:

"These are the people for whom Rocky Horror was made, and this is the audience the film has found."

[inkandbooknotes]

Personal Find: Bitters

Inscription:

Feb 2024

This book made me want to learn more about the history of cocktails & their ingredients. One highlight was the section on Underberg, which is served at a dive bar near my house and tastes just the right amount of terrible. See you soon!

Book:

Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All, with Cocktails, Recipes, and Formulas by Brad Thomas Parsons

[inkandbooknotes]

First Edition Find: Swamplandia!

Found:

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, first edition published by Knopf in 2011

First sentence:

"Our mother performed in starlight."

Last sentence:

"We used to have this cardboard clock on Swamplandia! and you could move the tiny red hands to whatever time you wanted, NEXT SHOW AT __:__ O'CLOCK!"

Dust jacket description:

"The Bigtree alligator-wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, formerly #1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, has just died; her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost; and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their family business from going under. Ava’s father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL; and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, to manage ninety-eight gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief.

Against a backdrop of hauntingly fecund plant life animated by ancient lizards and lawless hungers, Karen Russell has written an utterly singular novel about a family’s struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking. An arrestingly beautiful and inventive work from a vibrant new voice in fiction."

[inkandbooknotes]

First Ink

I live in a neighborhood with a lot of Little Free Libraries. There’s always a chance of something strange, perfect, or unexpected inside.

One part lucky coincidence and another whatever the word is for ‘just for you.’

This account is going to collect some of those: first editions and surprises. First pages with meaningful notes. Personal signs of capturing shared moments. The next chapter.