You know, that one book or series you’re always looking for, that one author you always seek out, the one that gives you an excuse to go into used bookstores? Years after finding, reading, and selling mine, I saw the second copy I had ever seen in a Little Free Library less than a block from my house.
Back when the internet was in its infancy, and eBay was a more reliable place to get old books than Amazon, I found a recommendation in a gaming magazine (Inquest) for a book called “To Your Scattered Bodies go” by Philip Jose Farmer. It was part of a series called Riverworld where everyone in existence had been resurrected on the banks of a river and if you died, you’d be brought back to life somewhere else along the way. It was an interesting premise, and I found the book almost immediately at the community college’s used book sale. I really liked it and i began what would be over a decade’s long quest to find them all.
I picked up the other books one-by-one, but always the later books in the series. I had 5 and 6 long before 2 or 3. I had over half the series at one point, but still hadn’t read past the first one because I wanted to read them in order. I probably could have bought the missing books online at that point but for whatever reason, I never did.
Eventually I found a copy of the second book, “The Fabulous Riverboat,” a weird hardback copy with the cover damaged while the rest of my books were paperback. But I didn’t hesitate. I bought it and started reading it that night. It was pretty good, all about Mark Twain teaming up with John Lackland, from the Robin Hood stories, to build an iron riverboat in this world that was largely at the wood and bone technology level. Although looking back, about the only thing I remember is the premise of the story.
Sadly, the series got pretty bad after that. I read the next book, but it really didn’t hold up. The main character was a straw feminist who pretty much spent every single sentence complaining about the patriarchy, and a lot of the characters from the first two books were mostly absent and not up to anything interesting. I read a bit of opinions and it sounded like it got worse from there and didn’t really pay off the series. So I set them down and eventually donated or sold them. Still, I have fond feelings for the series because it gave me a reason to go into used bookstores and I got such a thrill when I found a new one. I almost kept them, not for reading, but to remind me of the fun I had looking for them.
Then just a month ago, my neighbor set up a little free library and filled it with some decent sci-fi books, including Player of Games by Ian M. Banks. I added a couple titles that seemed fitting myself. About a week or two after being placed, I was shocked to see “The Fabulous Riverboat” in there. I had long since moved on, but it was still a surprise to see it there. After it had taken me years to find a copy, here was another one, on my block, less than a hundred feet from where I had kept my copy before getting rid of it. It definitely isn’t the same book, it’s a paperback and would have fitted in much nicer into my collection.
Every time I got past it, I stop and look at it. It’s still there, after all it’s the second book in the series and why would anyone *start* with that one? I’m not close with my neighbors, but I keep hoping to catch them outside and I’ll mention it. It would be nice to talk about that book with someone who might understand. I guess that’s why I’m posting here too. Someone once said that reading books and collecting books are two distinct pasttimes, and my feelings about this book are definitely in the latter.
by action_lawyer_comics
50 Comments
I can understand the feeling. I constantly search charity shops and used bookstores for Doctor Who books but I once happened upon a copy of Faction Paradox: Warring States for £10, naturally I bought it immediately as Faction Paradox books are very rare and I later saw that book attempt to be sold on eBay for £250.
I used to collect random series from used bookstores like this, and one I would collected was Farmer’s World of Tiers series. I started reading it because Zelazny said it was better than his own Amber series. (It’s not.)
Yes, citadel of fear by Francis Stevens, got a copy online for about £15, saw it in my town charity shop for £2, in better condition! So now I have 2 copies.
Also tales of science and sorcery by Clark Ashton Smith.
But yes there have been dozens of times I bought something online and then i saw it in a shop.
What a coincidence!
You are lucky to have a Little Free Library so close.
I have very fond memories reading all of those when I was about 14 or so! But I could just go to my fathers bookshelf and get the next one and in the right order too. Haven’t read them since then but I also suspect they didn’t age as well as some other stuff.
Sadly it’s a lot harder for me to hunt for some good Sci Fi since I’m German, but a few years ago I went spontaneously to an old bookshop (antiquariat) that was closing down for good and I managed to not only get a specific novel by Stanislaw Lem that I had been looking for for a while but I got almost his complete works including non-ficition and obscure stuff and paid almost nothing for it. Great day!
I like searching for the Alfred Hitchcock and Twilight Zone short story compilations.
What would be really crazy is if the copy in the LFL was the same one you’d gotten rid of.
I’ve been picking up hardcover versions of series I had in paperback that I really liked, and it’s so satisfying finding the last book to complete one. I just have one more to go in the Heralds of Valdemar, so close…
I’ve read every Mario Puzo book except two: Fools Die and The Fourth K.
Last week I was in a secondhand bookshop and they had exactly two Puzo books for sale: Fools Die and The Fourth K.
Jackpot.
I love the kismet of finding a piece pf media you’ve been craving. I’ve had similar experiences with rare records in odd unexpected stores. Side note, Player of Games is such a great book.
I remember reading that issue of Inquest. I actually just read To Your Scattered Bodies Go for the first time. After decades of anticipation, it was…. decent.
I love the first three books of that series. Farmer was, mostly, a fine writer.
Last week found the third book of Stephenson’s trilogy, Baroque Cycle, after having the first two for many years. Also, a week earlier found the House of Leaves after searching for it for years. I go to a nearby Saver’s religiously 🙂
What’s funny is that the paperbacks of those series were all over the used book stores in the midwest when I was in university (mid 90’s).
It wasn’t my white whale but back 20 years ago I had this urge to read Lonesome Dove but couldn’t find a copy either anywhere retail or second hand. I left empty handed and took a five hour bus ride to my hometown. Halfway there the bus stopped at a bus station where other buses connected. I wandered into the lobby where they had a little booth of candy snacks and souvenirs and toys and things to keep you occupied on your trip. There was a two foot shelf of used paperbacks and right in the middle was a weatherbeaten paperback copy of Lonesome Dove. Bought it for two dollars and for that entire summer I savoured reading it. And when I was finished I brought it with me on the next bus trip and gave it back to them because I thought it was good karma to do so.
I was gearing up to read the dune series, and my wife one day was going to second hand stores (not book shops).
Wandered into the first shop, and quite literally the only books in the entire place was the three book dune boxed set.
I read the 2nd book in the wheel of time series first, I also read the second a third Harry potter books before I picked up the first one. I remember thinking WoT book 2 fucking ruled. I realized I’d misordered it and went back to the first book and a bunch of things started clicking – like, one of the protagonists uses only staves, and in the first book there’s a bad ass duel between a sword wielding knight and a farmer with a staff. For Harry potter, I remember thinking the dursleys weren’t so bad, and all this bad shit kept happening to them bc of Harry. In my brain I really don’t remember the plot of the first book (oh, I just remembered a little) but the basilisk from the 2nd book is, like, iconic. As is Sirius Black/3rd book. Idk if it’s all that worth doing, but maybe one can deliberately disrupt the order of a series to create a sort of prequel effect to the prior books in a series?
I find playing cards sometimes, and I’ve always felt like the Jack of Clubs is the prettiest card in the deck. A couple years ago, I was walking in a parking lot and there was a lone playing card on the ground. Jack of fucking clubs. I thought maybe the universe was saying something to me, but…not really. Chaos seemingly ordered without actually being so.
Today, I found a playing card…10 of clubs. Briefly tempted to ask what it meant…Nothing. Shrug.
I’d say I’m indifferent to the realization that the universe doesn’t have anything to say to me, specifically, but I actually think I’m fairly disappointed.
Oh man, I read “To Your Scattered Bodies Go” about thirty years ago. I had no idea it was a series. I might have to go find them and give it a shot. Although I’m quite literal and likely autistic so if there’s a deeper meaning or something, I won’t get it.
ETA: I’m a LFL custodian. I’ve found a couple of cool things show up in mine, including a book by a famous songwriter about the town I live in. I sort of snagged that one. But I visit this amazing used book warehouse and in the free book section I find a lot of cool stuff. A middle school teacher retired and dumped her classroom library in the free bin. I had Superfudge, Ramona, all kinds of cool books! There are a number of kids in the area, so I snagged them all before they were dumped.
I’ve read the entire 20+ series of Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian several times, first through my library and then I bought the ebooks, but I’ve started collecting paperback copies too. I’m always thrilled to find one in a thrift store.
I respect your admiration for Farmer’s concept, even though I agree with you that the story fell apart in the later books. Good on you for waiting to read the series in the right order!
EDIT: my ‘white whale’ was a hardbound first edition of T. E. Lawrence’s “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.” Fifteen years after I started looking for it, I found one in an antique store in the midwest. $10.00 and cheap at the price!
The moral is, look everywhere for what you want. No telling where it’ll turn up.
The 80s Dave Duncans. Specifically A Man of His Word series. I did eventually find them all, but it took just about every bookstore within 50 miles and half.com to get them.
I once donated a couple of children’s books to charity and that very week a friend posted on facebook she had finally found the exact same books on a secondhand booksite and paid a fortune for them. Oops.
It wasn’t a white whale but definitely a welcome find…I’ll never forget finding a can of bushs baked beans in a little library. Meant a lot that night. My best book find was my favorite book, the name of the rose, in English. Couldn’t pass that one up
I used to buy a copy of Catcher in the Rye every time I found one in a used book store.
I’ve never actually read it, but there’s a copy on nearly every shelf of my library.
However I haven’t found a copy in any bookstore in about 15 years.
Oh gosh, that was one of the first series I’d read when I was young. My mother gifted the paperback collection to me — it was second-hand, but second-hand books are the best since they come with love. 🙂
I remember loving the series … maybe I should reread it, but maybe holding onto the memory is more important.
Being a post-it along one day and stick a note on it that says “highly recommend; good to read even if it isn’t the first in the series”
Lucky you.
I found mine halfway across the country in a used bookstore and it is the single most expensive book that Iʻve ever bought…and that includes school books.
It was an edition of Little Women illustrated by a particular artist. It had been in my elementary school library. I didnʻt remember who illustrated it, but I knew that I liked its illustrations the best. So I would check any copy of Little Women to see if it had the same illustrations. One day I was on a road trip and when I was in some random town that I was camping outside of, I went into the used bookstore, saw a copy of Little Women, flipped through it…and it was the book.
Didnʻt even look at the price. Didnʻt think it could be that much as it was just a used bookstore. Went into shock when I got to the register.
Turns out that the illustrator was well known and her books are collectibles.
You in Iowa? I put that book in the lfl near me a few months ago….
For years it was “Ariel” by Steven R Boyett which I had read at fourteen and loved. It has since been reissued in a revised version. I have never read the revised version. I have found four copies of the original edition over the years. I have given away three.
The series I keep looking for is “Her Majesty’s Wizard” by Christopher Stasheff. I stumbled upon the first one in a used book store and found the story fun, but the backstory of the series was intriguing.
The author’s note (or maybe the bio) shared that the author was wondering why medieval fantasies rarely seemed to mention religion when from what we know of history, their lives would have been steeped in good and evil, right and wrong, saints and sinners, damnation and redemption. When he couldn’t find the story he wanted, he had to write it.
Now I keep my eyes open for any of the others in the series, but keep finding a different series of his instead.
That takes me way back, as a kid I haunted secondhand bookstores all throughout highschool trying to figure out what all the books in each series were before the internet. Unless you had a newer printing of the earlier books that had those details, the only way to know would be to stumble across a book whose title you didn’t recognize. I remember reading all of Riverworld and being disappointed by the ending (though as a highschooler stuff about “the patriarchy” would have gone right over my head). Instead, I was never able to find all of his Dayworlder series.
These days with Amazon its easier to find all the books, but as an adult, its hard to make time to go back and (re)read old pulp I started as a kid, especially knowing that I’m probably going to end up thinking “why the hell did I ever read this stuff”. The last few incomplete series are sitting on my shelf right now, on hold for decades. Louise Cooper’s Indigo (vols 1-3 of ?, which I recall being a different take on Pandora’s Box) and Mike Jefferies’s Loremasters Of Elundium (vols 1-3 and 5 of ?, which I recall being a traveling fantasy in the vein of Lord of the Rings)
Since I don’t know the name of the books or the series or the author, how can I ever find my white whales? It doesn’t matter since I read them all when they were new in the early 90s but would read again if I could. The premise was there was a collection of giant machines from dozens of different advanced cultures but most of them nobody knew what they were for.
Mine was for many years Abbie Hoffmann Steal This Book. I refused to get it online as it felt like the kind of book you must obtain organically. Turns out a friend had it and I could keep it and it was a tremendous gift
That’s an amazing experience! I definitely know what you mean about having a book or books that are practically your entire excuse for going to used bookstores.
When I was younger, I saw a book at an airport bookstand with the most interesting cover. It depicted the Empire State Building falling apart, with a black, futuristic-looking skyscraper seemingly hidden within it’s core. For the life of me I can’t remember the author or title and have never been able to give a good enough description for a librarian or bookseller to find it for me.
At this point, I don’t even know if I’ll ever be able to find it since cover images come and go with every edition, so even if I find the right book, I might discard it because I don’t recognize the cover.
In 2005 I hiked the Appalachian Trail. When I got up to the New England area, I found half a book in a shelter. Someone had read it, cut it in half to save weight, and left that half in the shelter.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. It’s a Stephen King horror book about an 11 year old girl lost on the Appalachian Trail. She is being stalked through the woods by something horrible. The book was an absolutely perfect read at that time and place. I was completely engrossed and stayed up reading the entire first half. I finished it by headlamp long after dark.
But I only had the first half.
I spent the next day obsessing over the story and trying to figure out how to get the rest of it. This was before smart phones so trying to find a bookstore without data and internet or cell phone reception was NOT easy. I pulled out paper maps and tried to figure out how I was going to hitchhike to a decent size town way off the planned route. Nothing was convenient and I was going to throw off my whole schedule. But I was definitely going to do it. I had to get the rest of that book. I had my plan in place by the end of the day.
When I got to the next shelter, ready to get an early start tomorrow to start my quest….there was the 2nd half.
Damn good day. Damn good book. I bought the pop up version and it sits in on my coffee table from time to time.
This is the kind of post that I most enjoy on this sub.
Holy crap RIVERWORLD! WHERE EVERYBODY SOMEHOW KNOWS ESPERANO!
But likely it was either in a book collection and got demated, or borrowed. This is how my da, sister, and I can only form complete collections with each other. Wheel of Time? I have 8, dad has 3, sister has 5.
I’ve been a lifelong fan of the board game Clue (Cluedo, if you’re fancy). In the early ‘90s Scholastic started publishing a series of young-reader, armchair detective books based on the game (“created by A.E. Parker” which later proved hilarious because while no such author actually wrote these mini-mysteries, it is a clever combination of the game’s US publisher Parker Brothers, and original inventor Anthony E. Pratt). I discovered the game & books ≈1998, which seems to be around the time the series went out of print. Not satisfied to only have 3 books when the list inside of them told me there were 18 in total, I eventually found a few more at a tiny used book shop in town. The owners were super nice, and took to calling my mom whenever they found Clue books in a fresh stash to find out if any of them were volumes I didn’t have, and held them for us until we could come in to shop. Thanks to them I eventually did mostly complete both my collection of Clue books, and the later Clue Jr. books Scholastic also published through the ‘90s (presumably for the slightly younger readers whose parents didn’t see the humor in Mr. Boddy dying at the end of every book). The same store later helped me track down the tie-in storybook & novelization of the 1985 movie. It was my go-to place to drop off books I no longer needed, and thanks to a massive unloading of 5+ boxes of children’s books (young me was an insatiable reader & unconcerned hoarder lol) I’ve still got over $200 of in-store credit there.
I miss those owners. The store eventually changed its name, got new owners, moved into a larger & more comfortable location … but the new owners are obnoxiously right-wing, and have so much floor/shelf space devoted to the kind of Christian authors who are unabashedly-if-not-dangerously bigoted, I’m perfectly happy to let my store credit rot away in their system. I can source the few missing volumes of Clue & replace the more battered copies elsewhere (I am the weird adult scouring the kid’s books at every secondhand store I go to, determined to spot a Clue logo in all the noise lol).
There is a little free library on our walk route that is stocked with awesome books – Calvino, Borges, Perec, neat SciFi, poetry, all well curated. So we started dropping our cool books in it. One day the owner came out because she was digging the books we were putting in her library and introduced herself. Now we are all friends.
My first PJF was “A Feast Unknown”. It opened up a whole new world for me. I really enjoyed the fan fiction aspect of so many stories. He did takeoffs of so many characters, publishing them as the “real” story behind the original. The diskworld series was far better than Riverworld imho, and most of his other works have common themes or tie-ins. He was generally known back in the day for exploring sexual themes far more graphically (and realistically). I was only short a couple magazine short stories and I would have had everything he had published. Then the person who was storing my library while I was overseas defaulted on their mortgage and before I found out everything I had left behind was sold off, including all my pJF books. In total I lost over 3500 hardcovers and 5000 paperbacks.
Sadly, after skipping town it only took a couple years for them to eat a bullet so legal action was pointless. I’ve never had the heart to collect again. I also lost an autographed Fahrenheit 451 and an autographed first edition of John Carter of Mars.
> Player of Games by Iain M. Banks.
Distant relative of Iain Banks, who wrote The Wasp Factory and The Bridge.
It’s odd, isn’t it? Sometimes patterns seem to emerge… Like the universe is trying to tell us something.
Or maybe it’s just random crap?
Hard to say.
I found my white whale in an Indian restaurant on the wall covered in dust. I asked the owner how much to buy it and he said he’d give it to me for free. I knew the book was worth over $200 dollars. I insisted on buying it, but he just asked me to give him a five star review.
I’m confused. Why would you do this? It’s available all over the place online. Used, new, whatever.
That’s really cool.
Nothing better than stumbling on a secondhand book you’ve been trying to find for a while, especially when it is out of print/rare.
I, like you, really enjoyed the first book. I think I made it through the second book, and then just lost the thread from there.
You see, the protagonist of the first book is Richard Burton, the intrepid explorer, one of the first Christians to infiltrate Mecca and go on the Hajj back when they were kinda more strict on the whole no infidels thing.
Unfortunately the protagonist of some of the later books is a Mark Twain that totally sucks. He’s just unfunny and annoying. It’s wildly unfortunate and the tone of the series just changes awfully.
I ended up trying to peruse wikipedia and reviews to find out how the story more or less ends instead because I didn’t want to suffer through any more books.
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, though, is totally excellent.
I love Star trek the original series novels. I collect them. I got 20ish off of eBay in a bundle once, and it did not fill me with the same unrepentant joy as the one battered copy of Enterprise the first adventure that I found at the bottom of a bargain bin in a Christmas market, and had to go back for because I left it there before I realised my error.
There’s something about the search I think, it makes it feel more special, like you’re an archaeologist of books!
I loved that series when I was a kid. I think I’ve read through to the end at least twice. I was actually thinking of a third in the near future.
The latter books are more of a slog, but IIRC it pays off at the end with some answered questions. But you can probably just skip to the last book without missing anything.
This reminds me of the story of Richard Burton, and his many years’ long quest of collecting all the books in the Everyman’s Library series (around about a thousand books, give or take). Upon hearing this, Elizabeth Taylor promptly bought him the complete set, leather-bound, thereby managing to miss the point entirely, and rob him of the special joy collectors have in finding those elusive white whales. I found it rather poignant.
I’ve collected a few series. Once I found one I needed so I pulled it off the shelf. It had my maiden name written on the cover. Eerie and of course I bought it.