The Michael Vyse Addendum

Just a quick update on the previous musings on science fiction author Michael Vyse. As determined by Book Glutton and followed up on here, we'd pretty much established that Mr. Vyse was alive and well and living in France. But I've just noticed a new comment on that last post, from one Owen Vyse – Michael's son, who Vyse Sr. dedicted his collection of short stories, The Outer Reaches, to. Owen says his dad's not online, but Owen will send him a print-out of the relevant posts about his dad, and reckons Michael will be 'tickled pink'. So there you go. Amazing the connections the internet can make possible, and also some small vindication of what I kinda hoped Existential Ennui might turn out to be: an occasionally useful resource for those seeking info on particular obscure pursuits (just Google 'Patricia Highsmith First Editions', for example). Huzzah.

Wot I Did On My Summer Holidays, By Louis XIV, Age 372

Well, it's been a particularly fine few days for book collecting, so much so that I now have a towering (well, ish), tottering (well, kinda) pile of first editions sitting on the coffee table waiting patiently for me to blog about them (and, of course, read them too... at some point). To give you a sense of what I've been up to, I've been here:









Bookworms in Shoreham, West Sussex (note Random Lady in foreground helpfully exclaiming the name of the shop; as you'll see as this post progresses, I didn't take any photos of my own on me travels, and Google Maps is a bit glitchy when you're trying to take screengrabs), as well as here:








Badgers Books in Worthing, also East Sussex (that weird map overlay of the road is also courtesy of Google Maps), not to mention here:










Sotheran's in Sackville Street, Picadilly, London (which is a real shop, despite this picture of it, the one that adorns their website, in fact, being a weird Photoshop line art jobbie), and also here:











Henry Pordes Books on Charing Cross Road, London (complete, once again, with Random Lady, or rather Ladies), and finally here:










The famous Cecil Court, just off Charing Cross Road. Phew. Bookworms and Badgers in West Sussex were the source of the acquisitions I mentioned yesterday, while the London bookshops were where I was at today (as well as at the Royal Academy for the Summer Exhibition – where there was an amazing, mountainous Anselm Kiefer painting, the highlight of the show for me – plus the Photographers Gallery and the Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery – the usual selection of the bad, the worse and the truly bloody awful there). Central London bookshops tend to be somewhat overpriced, so although I like to have a good old mooch around them, I rarely buy anything in 'em. This time, however, I did rather well, unexpectedly plugging a glaring hole in my Richard Stark collection and picking up a few other things besides, both on and off the Westlake tip, and all at surprisingly reasonable prices. And then when I got home I had another Stark Score waiting for me courtesy of eBay and the postie.

Now all I need to do is find the time to blog about them all, instead of merely posting daft pictures of the bookshops I got them in. Oh I'm such a tease...

Must Be Thursday 29/7/10

I may be back from Guernsey but I'm still on me summer hols at the moment, which means I'm not online so much right now, which in turn means I can't post here as often as I'd like (but which is probably still more often than many people would wish). In any case, I've got a bunch of new acquisitions to blog about, a couple of reviews to knock out (the aforementioned Rogue Male and Black Ice Score), some thoughts on William Boyd's Ordinary Thunderstorms and J. G. Ballard's Concrete Island to get out (purely by chance I happened to start reading them at the same time and there's a definite shared plot element between the two), and likely other stuff besides. But instead of all that, some of which might be quite interesting, I've decided instead in the brief moments I've managed to snatch at the computer to bang out a severely truncated guide to the comics I'll be getting this week. Sorry about that.

Action Comics #891
Batman The Return Of Bruce Wayne #4 (Of 6)
Wonder Woman #601
Secret Avengers #3
Rasl #8 (delayed from last week)

And not even any accompanying pictures either. Sheesh. What a gyp.

The Island Without Any Bookshops

Actually that's not quite true: Guernsey does have some bookshops. It's just they're of the WHSmiths variety: new books only, and a limited selection at that.

Yes, I'm back from a week's break in the Channel Island known as Guernsey, where you'd think, with a population of 65,000, there might be a second hand bookshop or two. But no. You'd be wrong. They do have the occasional book fair there – I missed the most recent one by a matter of days – but no second hand bookshops, as a befuddled man in a stamp and postcard collectors' shop explained to me. Still, they do have a lovely coastline:













so it's not all bad. And of course I did manage to ferret out a few books here and there in charity shops and the like, including at one point a little stall by the side of the road (Guernsey is dotted with little boxes on garden walls containing what's known as 'hedge veg': local produce for sale to anyone passing):













That's me having a rummage. I didn't find anything there, but I did pick these up elsewhere:













A 1971 UK first edition of Hammond Innes' Lekvas Man, published in hardback by Collins, and a 1984 UK first edition of Frederick Forsyth's The Fourth Protocol, published in hardback by Hutchinson. Not exactly scarce either of 'em, but at 50p apiece I can't really complain, and with so few books on offer on the island, well, beggars can't be choosers. Not sure if the Innes will be my cup of tea, but I liked the jacket, which was designed by Richard Dalkins. As for the Forsyth, I read The Day of the Jackal years and years ago, and The Fourth Protocol is supposed to be a solid read. The jacket was designed by Raymond Hawkey, who I've mentioned before, and which I was surprised about: it's not particularly creative. I mean, it's striking enough, but not up there with, say, The Book of Bond.

I did manage to polish off a couple of books in the past week: Richard Stark's The Black Ice Score and Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male, but I'll blog about those separately. So yes. I'm back. Hang out the fecking bunting.

Must Be Thursday 22/7/10

Ooh, you lucky, lucky people, you. It's my weekly round-up of the new comics I'll be purchasing this week – or at least thinking about purchasing – a whole two days early! Shit the bed! The reason for this being, Existential Ennui will be on its summer hols from tomorrow, probably for about a week, maybe longer depending how much I miss blogging (so almost certainly longer then), and I couldn't leave you without my incisive and witty thoughts on the week's slate of new comics. The only problem being I'm working from the unconfirmed list of comics, so things might change by the time Diamond Comic Distributors release their proper official list on Tuesday. But, y'know. Live fucking dangerously for a change, why don'cha?

So, to the comics! And it's a potentially interesting week for the indie publishers, a half-decent week for Marvel, and a rubbish week for DC Comics. Let's look at those indie titles foist:

























Up top there is a new series from the one and only Alan Moore, Neonomicon (Avatar, regular and wraparound cover), which sounds like a convention for crusty dayglo ravers and probably isn't as big news as it maybe should be. It's a sequel to The Courtyard, also published by Avatar, which was a comics adaptation of a Moore prose story, and which I didn't read, chiefly because the comics weren't actually written by Moore himself. So that puts me at a slight disadvantage with Neonomicon. I did, however, read the preview, and that was about a couple of FBI agents who visit a madman who speaks in tongues. I think it's all something to do with Lovecraft, but we shall find out. So helpful, aren't I?

Also on an indie tip, there Jeff 'Bone' Smith's interdimensional action thriller Rasl (Cartoon Books), which has got a bit bogged down in a history lesson about Nikola Tesla of late but, judging by the cover, looks like it might be picking up again; and an anniversary issue for The Walking Dead (Image), #75 to be precise. Happy seventy-fifth birthday, Walking Dead! You don't look a day over, uh... no, can't think of a payoff for that one.

Moving on, here's the only comic being published by DC this week that I'm remotely interested in:













DC Universe Legacies #3 by Len Wein, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Dave Gibbons. It kinda speaks volumes about DC's current output (the recently raved-about Action Comics and Grant Morrison's Bat-books aside) that the only DC comic I'm buying was put together by such an old skool collection of creators. And it's not like DC/Vertigo/WildStorm don't have any comics out this week; they do, around twenty-five of the buggers, plus sundry variant editions and graphic novels. It's just all so sodding pedestrian. I mean, who, exactly, is buying Azrael, or Supergirl, or even Justice Society of America these days? Er, says the man intending to buy DC Universe Legacies...

Things are slightly better over at Marvel this week, but only slightly:













That's Avengers #3 and New Avengers #2, both written by Brian Michael Bendis, with art from John Romita Jr. on the former and Stuart Immonen on the latter. Swings and roundabouts on these Avengers relaunch titles thus far; I like the fact that Hulk-of-the-future the Maestro is involved in Avengers (that's him behind Kang on the cover), but conversely I can't for the life of me recall what happened in New Avengers #1 right now, so a little from column A, a little from column B there. Other than those, it's shit like New Mutants and Lady Deadpool over at Marvel this week, but there is, also, this:













Amazing Spider-Man #638, wherein Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada attempts to put right all the stuff he fucked up with that bloody awful 'One More Day' story from a few years ago and the subsequent misguided snoozefest the Spider-Man comics have been ever since. At least, that's what I'm hoping wll happen here, 'cos at this point it'll take a fucking miracle to get me reading Spidey comics again...

And that's yer lot for a wee while. As I say, I'll be back online in about a week, hopefully having read a few books, so maybe I'll waffle on about those 'pon my return. In the meantime, if you're really bored, you might find an old post you haven't read before if you click on the archived posts to the right there. I wouldn't recommend it myself, but takes all sorts. Cheerio.

Westlake Score: Anarchaos by Curt Clark

Here's a Donald E. Westlake curio to rank alongside that paperback biography of Elizabeth Taylor Adam got me for me birthday:













This is the US first edition of Anarchaos, a science fiction novel by Westlake, published under the pseudonym Curt Clark in paperback by Ace in 1967. It's been described elsewhere as 'Parker in space': a tough guy on a mission to the eponymous lawless planet to find the man who killed his brother. OK, not quite like a Parker novel then, and also it's written in the first-person, but there is at least a crime element to it. There are loads of copies of this online, probably because many of the listings don't mention Westlake at all, not having made the connection, but this copy's really nice; the page edges are orange and there's some rubbing on the spine, but other than that it looks unread, with no spine creases at all.

Anarchaos was actually collected along with some of Westlake's short SF stories in Tomorrow's Crimes, so I might try and pick that up too at some point. I like the cover illo on this paperback though; when you get up close to it you can see it's almost abstract – those 'cars' whizzing along the highways and the people at the base of the tower merely dabs of paint, while the spacecraft that's just landed looks like a paper plane. It's credited to "Lynch", about whom, as ever, I know nowt. Classy cover though.