Oculus Presents: Another find for the Shelf O' Stuff

Welcome to Oculus Presents, folks.

I confess that for a long-ass time, I'd only known Patricia Highsmith as the author of the novel The Price of Salt (nowadays also published as Carol, after the movie adaptation), a groundbreaking piece of 1952 lesbian fiction. And then I found out she was actually a very acclaimed crime and thriller author of such classics as The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. I know it usually happens the other way around when people get into her books, but either way, she's been on my to-read list for a while.

And then I found a copy of this book in a used bookshop.

Those Who Walk Away apparently is one of Ms. Highsmith's lesser-known thrillers, but it is still relatively widely read (bestselling crime author here) and has been published many times, in various languages. However, this particular edition with the wonderfully unsettling cover was released by Pan Books in 1970 as part of the very obscure Best of American Crime Fiction series (not to be confused with the other series titled The Best of American Crime Fiction, which came earlier and had a very different cover art style). And it is pretty much impossible to find on the internet. Nothing on Goodreads and Abebooks, nothing on eBay; only a few question marks from Pan paperback collectors, and copies for sale of various other books from this same series. Eventually I managed to dig up a blog entry on the Pan Books collectors' website, TiKiT, which includes at least a photo of this edition of Those Who Walk Away in the TiKiT catalog, proving that this is in fact a thing that people know about. I haven't the foggiest how valuable this edition is, nor do I particularly care, but it's definitely one of the hardest-to-find books I've tried to track down, especially from such a famous author. Whether the contents will hold up to that creepy cover remains for me to see, but I'm very glad to place it on the Shelf.

Update: I forgot to credit the designer behind this magnificently scary cover art - the back cover of the book tells me it's the work of one Tom Simmonds. Hats off, Mr. Simmonds.

Oculus Presents: A really... interesting new purchase

Hey, everyone, this is Oculus Presents.

Welp... I guess I own this now.

For those of you who don't speak German: this is a German-language edition of the infamous Stephen King novel Rage, published in 1977 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman (my German copy is dated 1995, and is a reprint of an earlier translation). Rage has achieved some uncomfortable notoriety in horror circles as being, to this date, the only Stephen King novel he personally had pulled from print (don't get me wrong, copies can be found, but it's a novel of his you won't see getting a new edition any time soon). And when Stephen "I wrote a story about self-cannibalism" King feels he's crossing a line, you know you're in for some harrowing stuff.

Let's not beat around the bush: Rage is a novel about a school shooting, and the reason why King let it fall out of print is because it has become associated with real-life tragedies similar to its plot. I've never read it, nor did I particularly feel like it until lately - I like boundary-pushing fiction as much as the next guy, but fictionalized tragedies make me feel uncomfortable as hell. I don't feel like horror has a moral responsibility towards its fans because that would be a real after-school special kind of view of the genre, but there are some topics I simply do not feel like reading about when I'm trying to have fun (well, a given definition of "fun", seeing how horror usually aims to stir some darker emotions). Especially because those topics are usually chosen and handled by hack authors only aiming to shock and disgust, with all the tact and delicacy of a rabid elephant.

But this copy of the book has been beckoning at me from a used bookshop for months now, man. As a sort of horror and genre fiction collector, the idea of owning a copy of this notorious King novel, even in a foreign-language edition, had a sort of odd appeal to me. And I ended up giving in to that. I don't actually speak German despite studying it in middle school, and like I said, this novel wasn't very high on my TBR list anyway; but I do aim to learn the language, if only for the sake of reading Amok someday. Am I gonna enjoy it if I do? Probably not. But now I've gotta, I guess.

Oculus Presents: Three rare vintage book covers

Hey, folks, this is Oculus Presents. Again.

I'm not exactly a book collector, my occasional eBay and Thriftbooks browsing aside - as much as I love forgotten and underrated genre fiction, I'm usually content to just long from afar for the truly rare out-of-print editions that go for huge prices on the collectors' market. One of the reasons I admire Valancourt Books so much (I urge y'all specfic fans to check out their catalog and throw a few bucks their way if you can - I'm not, like, affiliated with them or anything, I just think they're really neat) is the fact that they've brought back to life a whole lot of highly sought-after books that were either very rare or flat-out impossible to track down. But it does happen sometimes that I run into a real gem during my library and used bookshop trips - something that while not completely unavailable on the market, is enough of a curiosity to catch my eye. Hell, sometimes I won't even know they're rare until I check for them on the internet. I own three particular books that are really anything but rarities by themselves - but the editions in my library are very little known and very eye-catching, so I thought I'd share.

First off is this 1966 Pan Books Ltd. edition of Dead Man's Folly by Agatha Christie. I know Agatha Christie books are about as far from rarities as you can get - can't throw a stone in a bookshop or a library without hitting one - but this particular edition by London publisher Pan Books has pretty much vanished from consciousness, and I've seen copies of it go for 16 dollars and above. Not too shabby for a bestselling novel. Still, it's a shame, because I really dig the colors and the general layout of this cover - simple, but eye-catching with a real classy vintage flair. The book itself I've read and loved; I really think every single fan of crime fiction owes it to themselves to read at least one Agatha Christie book in their lives.

Mary Higgins Clark was a bestselling thriller and mystery writer, so also not what you'd call a rarity on the speculative fiction market; but this 1981 edition of one of her novels, published by Fontana Press, caught my eye with the absolutely gorgeous cover art at a used bookshop enough that I'd bought it on the spot. It's not a rare printing, per se, but it's definitely one of the harder-to-find ones; for a while I couldn't even track down a good-quality cover photo, which is a bit surprising given the gazillion editions of this book out there. I tried reading the book a while back and found the writing unbearably stuffy and one-dimensional, but I'll definitely be giving it another chance. I mean, I can't just not read a book I own with a cover this pretty.

Last, but not least, the 1973 New English Library version of Frank Herbert's The Green Brain is one of my favorite book covers ever printed. The colors, the composition, the rich detailing - an all-around masterpiece by cover artist Bruce Pennington. I've heard good things and bad things about the book itself, but the first few pages I'd read a bit back piqued my curiosity. I'll definitely feature this book in more detail on the blog, once the sci-fi mood strikes me again. And for extra charm, look at this inscription on the title page of my copy of this book:

I suppose we shall see if this book will also make me understand that insects are friends...