April 15 - Grafton Books, closing sale

The pace of change, etc., but it's no fun losing a bookstore: I'm buying more new books now than I used to, and I still haven't bought a book online, but I do love used bookstores. Grafton Books, you'll be missed in Oak Bay, and it's not really a salve to know that your owners already have Beacon Books in Sidney. Not my local.

In honour of Grafton's closing, I went and partook heavily at their half-price closing sale:
  • Howard Breen-Needham et al., eds., Witness to Wilderness: The Clayoquot Sound Anthology ($9)
  • Thornton W. Burgess, Nature Stories to Read Aloud ($3: wow, politics have changed since 1959)
  • John Gay, Poems on Several Occasions: Volume the First ($50: not bad shape for the 1753 Lintot edition)
  • Gary Geddes, Falsework ($8.50: verse novel on the 1958 mid-construction collapse of the Second Narrows Bridge, in Vancouver)
  • Katherine Gordon, Made to Measure: A History of Land Surveying in British Columbia ($30)
  • Zane Grey, Ken Ward in the Jungle ($8: which will be awesome, I just know it, along the lines of Grey's Roping Lions in the Grand Canyon -- why do people never think these are real titles?)
  • Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune ($3: fourth volume in the series)
  • Craig J. McArthur, BC Centennial of Logging: A Century of Photographs, 1866-1966 ($40: highly specialized nerdgasm)
  • Barbara Norfleet, Manscape with Beasts: Photographs ($7: photos of wildlife in juxtaposition with human stuff, like her 1984 "Garter snake with wine bottle and Wall Street Journal")
  • John Pass, Water Stair ($7: my first book by Mr. Kishkan!)
  • Kim Stanley Robinson, Forty Signs of Rain ($5.50: first volume in Robinson's climate-change apocalypse trilogy)
  • Kim Stanley Robinson, Sixty Days and Counting ($6: third volume - gotta get Fifty Degrees Below, clearly)
  • Sound Heritage vol. 8, no. 4, In the Western Mountains: Early Mountaineering in British Columbia ($10: such a fascinating series)
  • Rev. Edward Wilson, ed., The Naturalist's Poetical Companion ($50: the 1846 second edition of this charming collection)

Comments

Janni Aragon said…
Wow, what a haul. And, lots of stuff for you to use at work and play!
Janni
jo(e) said…
Wait, you've NEVER bought a book online. Ever?
richard said…
I have never bought a book online, EVER. I've asked Grafton to buy a book online for me, so I could pay them the markup, but never directly online.

Bookstores. Browsing. Pay to keep them alive.
jo(e) said…
I'm impressed.

I used to even order my students' books through a small independent bookstore here, but sadly, that store went under. It's harder and harder to find bookstores to support.
richard said…
Aw, shucks.

We've got lots in Victoria still, with a couple of large independents and some small new-only independents as well. There are also some terrific used stores.

If there weren't these options, then I'd probably make an arrangement with a valued store in another city, so that they could mail me what I wanted. But it does take work.

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