Thursday This n That

The other night, I was trying to figure out what to read next.  I'd just given up on the time-travel romance and I couldn't decide.  So, I downloaded some free, new-to-me books.  But reading on the Kindle wasn't blowing my skirt up.  I keep meaning to read some more of that Andre Norton collection I bought years ago, but I never know which ones are parts of series or even what order they're in or anything.  This lead me to a bibliography of everything she'd ever written.  Holy crap, the woman was prolific.  I printed the list out and sat down at my bookcase.  It took me about a half hour to sort through them all and get them in some semblance of order.  I sorted them by series and publication date.  Then I picked up the earliest 'single title' - Huon of the Horn.  But it's a historical with SF/F elements and I wasn't in the mood.  Next up in the single titles was Dread Companion - a straight SF.  So far, so weird.  It makes me wonder if Andre was smoking something.  We'll see if I stick with it.

One thing I did discover, though, is that most of this collection is comprised of first edition paperbacks.  Way cool.  I think a couple might be rare.  Even cooler.

I did this same thing earlier this year with my collection of Mickey Spillanes.  And wouldn't you know it, I don't have all of them or even all of any particular series.  Same with the Andre Nortons.  Ack.

The problem with collecting old books... well, one of them anyway... is that I'm not quite sure in my head which ones I have or which ones I need, so I end up buying by author name and hoping I'm not duplicating.  Unfortunately, this is how I ended up with two old copies of The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles.  Which I discovered when I reorganized my bookshelves a while back.

Oh, well.  They're books.  And they're old.  And I love them.

Heh, I didn't start out to make this an all 'book collecting' edition of this-n-that, but there it is.  Anything you want to add?  Do you collect books by any particular authors?