As for ROBERT PARKER, I walked up to Sunset Boulevard to check out Mystery Pier Books and oh boy, I’m glad I did!
I was allowed to hold (but not photograph) a first edition of Parker’s second Spencer novel, God Save the Child. So cool! I had never seen that edition or cover!
Do remember what a big Parker fan I am.
There was this posting in which Stephen King and I hung out together at a Parker signing.
And this posting in which I had drinks with Parker at his home where I stole something.
All that said, I’m not a big fan of rare books. I don’t get it. What I care about are the words, no matter what year they were printed onto what pages or how those pages were bound.
The thrill of seeing God Save the Child today was not only that its cover was new to me (I like it!), but more so the memories it caused; the book having been edited and designed in 1974 by the good folks at Houghton Mifflin, working out of One Beacon Street (Boston) just down the street from 34 Beacon Street where I was then working for Little Brown. God, but those were great days and great publishing! (I sound like such an old fart.)
For me, even the autographed and personalized books that one gathers throughout a career in the industry are not about the damn editions, but about having had the good fortune of working with good people like Tracy Kidder, Lincoln Peirce, Kim Dower, Berke Breathed, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Jeff Kinney, Yousuf Karsh, Ansel Adams, Herman Wouk, Allan Jators, and others I’ve written about in this blog.
I walked out of Mystery Pier Books and into, right next door, Book Soup. And wow! What a great bookstore! To my mind, better than anything in New York. Seriously!
Great stock, smart staff, and the ambience deserving of the nearly sacred (to me) stuff sold there.
As for (note link) MY FAVORITE AUTHOR, like always, they had plenty of his stuff. Go Max, go!
As for that (note link) UPCOMING AUTHOR, there wasn’t much (none) of his stuff in stock.
But having just had his first book published in 1989, I’m sure things will kick in soon enough.
So with a bit of a bruised writer’s ego, I headed home.
And on the way, ran into the offices of Fox News .
