DWJ March Kickoff: My Collection

By -
For the first day of DWJ March, Kristen wants us to show off our collections.  Mine is fairly extensive, but beat up.  All of them have been read many times.  They mostly live in my 13-year-old daughter's room now.  She got the whole collection on to one shelf for you to see, so ignore the shelf above that.


I have duplicates of a few titles.  And I have just about everything, except Changeover and Islands of Chaldea (coming soon!).  I even have a copy of Yes, Dear, a picture book about a little girl who finds a magic leaf, but I'm not sure where it is right now.  I thought I knew, but it wasn't there.

Some of my copies are really ancient and I would like to get new ones before they fall completely apart.  Check out my copy of The Ogre Downstairs: hideous cover from 1977, former library copy, and a paperback.  The Spellcoats isn't doing much better; I picked it up used and it's from 1979.  Though I actually quite like the cover!  And Archer's Goon, also bought used--in the 1980s--and starting to disintegrate. 



As you can see there is not much in the way of matching sets.  I absolutely loved the Dalemark covers that came out some years ago, but I only have Drowned Ammett; I wish I had the others too.  DWJ mostly suffered from horrible cover art, but those Dalemark covers were lovely, and quite a bit of the newer stuff is great.  I don't have any of those nice UK covers you see now, but they are pretty good.

So there you have it--my DWJ shelf.





Comments

  1. Kristen M.March 1, 2014 at 12:35 PM

    I agree that old DWJ books have some of the worst covers out there but now, with the rereleases, they happen to have some of the most gorgeous ones that I've ever seen (and not just because I already love the books).

    I'm jealous that you have a Black Maria. I would love a copy with that title on it because it has so much more meaning than plain old Aunt Maria.

    Thank you for sharing your collection! I will definitely encourage Z to read my books but I'm not sure I'll ever let them disappear into his room. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanMarch 1, 2014 at 10:16 PM

    I do love the title Black Maria, while Aunt Maria means practically nothing. And I agree about the re-releases--they are pretty great covers. Wish I had some!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMarch 2, 2014 at 7:25 AM

    Someone needs to rerelease Aunt Maria with the proper title on it!

    Do you want me to have a copy of The Spellcoats sent to you? I am pretty sure I can get one on PaperbackSwap if you want -- I have loads of credits and nothing particular I'm planning to spend them on. Email me if you'd like another copy -- readingtheend AT gmail DOT com. It's from Paperbackswap, so it would be used, but most of the books I've gotten from them are in reasonably good condition.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anastasia @ Here There Be BooksMarch 3, 2014 at 8:21 PM

    I am also in agreement about the terrible old covers! But the newest US releases are pretty good, and the HarperCollins ones from the UK (I think?) are FABULOUS.

    -- Anastasia @ Here There Be Books

    ReplyDelete
  5. KerryMarch 7, 2014 at 12:10 AM

    That's a wonderful collection. And I'm glad the next generation is enjoying them.

    I just popped downstairs to look at mine and had this feeling some were missing. Reading your post has reminded me that they are in my 10 year old son's room.

    I'll get them all in one place before I take the photo for my post (I'm playing catchup.)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more