I love Half-Price Books. Call this a glowing review for a retail experience. Tonight I dropped by one of my local Half-Price Books locations and picked up seven books for $13.70 plus tax. That's less than $1.96 per book!
I picked up one book each from L.E. Modesitt Jr and Georges Simenon, two from Ngaio Marsh, and three from John le Carré.
The L.E. Modesitt Jr book, The Ghost of the Revelator, is the second of an alternate-history science fiction series of which I have not yet read the first. No matter, I trust Modesitt enough to know that my investment was not wasted even though it was by far the most expensive purchase, at $3.48. If it turns out that I can't appreciate this book without having read the first, I'll simply pay full retail for the first. I recently paid full price for two others of his books, and both were well worth it — reviews are forthcoming.
Madame Maigret's Own Case, by Georges Simenon, is one (The first? I could not find an ordered list, and this comes first alphabetically.) in a series of 23 mystery novels featuring Chief Inspector Jules Maigret, or in this case, his wife. This particular novel was published in Paris in 1950, then translated into English in 1959. I love old British mysteries, and I hope that old French mysteries will be similarly captivating. Though the characters have appeared on the PBS television series MYSTERY!, I have unfortunately missed them there, tending to tune in only when I catch a commercial for Poirot. All of the books in this series were marked at $1.98, which is actually less than the half of the cover price of $6.00.
The last time or two I visited with my family, at least one of them was inevitably carrying a book by Ngaio Marsh. I was assured that she was a worthy successor to Agatha Christie, writing old-style mysteries. A blurb on the back cover of the paperbacks assures us that "It's time to compare Christie to Marsh instead of the other way around." I pay attention to the blurb only because of the last name of the author, Dilys Winn of New York Magazine. I picked up two novels of hers, more or less at random. Final Curtain was written in 1947 and False Scent was written in 1959. The pair together cost $3.50, the cover price of both.
Article comments
1 - Tom Johnson
Thanks for this, Phillip! I checked out their site and found they had a store here in Phoenix, which I'll be checking out this weekend.
2 - Michelle
I love getting cheap books, which is not that easy in Germany, because books falls under a special rule - they have to have the same price everywhere. Which really sucks.
3 - Phillip Winn
Tom (#1) - They're based here, and I regularly visit four of them. Each has a slightly different "feel." One has a better children's section, the other has more mysteries, still another has a deeper science fiction collection, and so on. But they're all good. :)
4 - Daisy
I heard that the legend De Camp (or his son or someone who inherited it) sold off his library. Tons of sci-fi books. The apple of a collector's eye. Rumor has it that these books were bought by Half Price Books -- the very same used bookstore chain that you're chatting about. Has anyone else got the scoop? Do share.
5 - Dave Nalle
It makes some sense since DeCamp lives in Dallas now and HPB is based in Texas. I know that DeCamp has had some health and financial problems in recent years - he's now quite old and not writing much, so selling off his books makes sense. No hard data on the sale, though. I doubt that HPB would have given him a competitive price. They're more about volume than quality.
Dave