From Inside The Pages: The Complete Poems of Ernest Hemingway

To go along with the latest Authors We Love post, I have another From Inside The Pages post for you this week. It’s directly related to the Hemingway post, which works out great.

I already talked about the book itself in the Authors We Love post, so I won’t go too much into the books itself. Basically it’s a book of Hemingway’s poetry. I just read some of it today. I only read the first section, which is called “Juvenilia.” That’s basically what it is. I wasn’t terribly pleased with it, but found some good lines.

Why did I just start reviewing the book? Haha, I’m glad you asked. It’s because of what I found inside this copy. I wanted to “review” it a little bit because this was in fact given to its previous owner as a review copy. Inside was a bookmark from the University of Nebraska Press from 1983 (maybe 82 depending on how early it was sent out).

I wanted to share this because I’ve been reviewing for about 6 months now and seeing this puts into perspective how things have changed in 30 years. I haven’t received many books from traditional publishers, but I don’t think it’s much different from some Indie authors. In today’s world we can receive a book either through mail or email/electronic store. Then once we read it and reviewed it we can post it directly to any site we would like and email it directly to the publisher or author, whatever’s the case. From this bookmarks (my only window into the past of reviewing) reviewing was a snail mail only business (obviously). And also reviews would have to be sent through snail mail back to the publisher….in this case TWO copies of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So yea that’s pretty much what I have to say about that. It’s just something to think about when we complain about getting the wrong format. Or when Amazon doesn’t post a review right away. Just remember the days of print books only and snail mail. Scary isn’t it

From Inside The Pages: Stephen King Edition!

I think it’s only fitting to compile this series of finds into one post. Why not? These books are all from the same great author, Stephen King.

The strangest thing about these books is that four out of the five were bought on the same day, from the same place. My mom works at a health care center and they get book donations all the time. These donated books are then sold for fifty cents a piece. FIFTY CENTS! On this day my mom came home with a good amount of my Stephen King collection, eleven books.  So basically I’m set on King books for awhile. I think I have about half of what he’s written now.

One book that was obtained months before this great book buying day was Firestarter, though it was bought on another amazing book buying day (I came home with a few boxes/bags of books). In my beat up copy of Firestarter I found half of a card. There is a tear along the left side where more was attached. I’m guessing the owner of the book/card didn’t care to save the rest of it, haha. I can’t tell who it was from or what it was for exactly. I guess I could always just look up the small poem, but I’m not completely interested in that right now. I more find it interesting that what seems like a sweet, kind poem is in a Stephen King book about a fire starter. It just shows the diversity of King’s audience and the diversity of this reader as well. It’s always refreshing to see.

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Just for the hell of it, I’m including this next bit. I mean it when I say “bit.” What I found in my copy of King’s Insomnia was a tiny little piece of a business card. The only thing I can read from this is “One” and “Tel.” from where a phone number was listed. That’s all I really have to say for this one. If it wasn’t in the batch with other King books I would have left things unsaid, but why not, it’s worth a small mention.

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Need some masonry done? Well don’t worry here’s the number to Olenych Masonry Inc from Bovina Center, NY. This is a sticker/label I found in my copy of King’s Needful Things. What I notice with this book, and you’ll see with the next one, is that the books I received on this day probably didn’t move around much. Someone probably read all of them over the years and donated them all at once. This is supported by where this label is for and the business card in the next book. It’s also evident because three of the books I’m posting here, along with four more I have on my shelf, are all matching editions.

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How about I throw these two together. What I have here is book two and book four of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. The great thing about this is that I was just finishing up the first Dark Tower book The Gunslinger the first in the series when I got this stack of books. So it was only fitting that I’d get the 2nd and 4th book. I also got the 3rd book, but there wasn’t anything in that one to put in this post.

In The Drawing of The Three there was one of the most common things I have found in books. It was a business card. This is also the piece of memorabilia I hinted at in the section on Needful Things. The card is for Oneonta Aviation, Inc out of West Oneonta, NY. Oneonta is the town in which my mom works and where these books were bought. So you see, these books might not have gotten around much. Bovina is roughly in the area as well. It’s (according to Google) about 50 minutes away.

This card is for the Oneonta Municipal Airport. It’s actually really cool because I didn’t know they had  one. I’ve been in the city before (it’s really just a big town is you ask me but I don’t know what qualifies cities exactly) many times and never saw a sign for an airport or any size. So see, this is proof that you can learn something from books….

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As I said I also got book four in the Dark Tower series, Wizard of Glass. Now what could I possibly find in this book. Well, if you’ve been following with these From Inside The Pages posts, I could have found pretty much anything.

 So I found this staring back at me: 

 Scary right? It’s not a creature from the book…I don’t think so at least. I haven’t read passed The Gunslinger still, but I’m confident he’s not in the books. This is a picture of a blue man…from the Blue Man Group. This is a small advertisement of sorts for their live show. It lists a few cities on the back and same something about a DVD as well. I’m thinking this may have been included as a CD or DVD insert.

It’s a very creepy (and probably appropriate) bookmark to find in a book. It also helps round out the interests of the former owner of these books. This person listened to interesting music, liked poetic greeting cards, needed some masonry done, and all this while needed to travel in a small plane. I could easily make a fictional assumption dealing with all of these random makeshift bookmarks, but I think I’m going to leave it to your imaginations.

From Inside The Pages: Son of a Witch

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In my copy of Gregory Maguire’s Son of a Witch I found this sheet of paper. It’s not exactly something I think most people would want to forget in their book. The main reason for that being that this is a notification that a person’s student loan payment is VERY late….those caps are justified. I quote “Your student loan payment is seriously past due!” (I added the underlining.) I didn’t take a better picture of the front of this sheet of paper since there was some personal information on this that I felt shouldn’t be shared (full name, address, account number). I just blocked it out anyway, just in case someone REALLY wanted to be a dick. But the body of this letter is just a form letter nothing interesting to read anyway.

Luckily it looks like the person in question did call up the loan company to try to get this issue fixed. There are phone numbers and other notes written on the paper. I take it that this person at least called them up, even if she didn’t take action passed that. I don’t know how much more she did because of what’s on the back of the paper.

One strange thing is the note on the back.

“Please feed Jinx when you wake up love.”

It’s obvious someone needed a piece of paper for a quick note and this one was chosen. I’m guessing Jinx is a cat, and I hope that Jinx got feed before this paper was forgotten in the book.  But the stranger thing is on the top of the back page. There is a web address http://www.chucklorre.com or it’s http://www.chucklorrie.com The “i” and “e” are mashed together so I can’t tell which was meant or is one was a mistake. A website with “lorrie” doesn’t exist to my knowledge (at least in 2012, this paper was from 2008). A site with “lorre” DOES exist. It’s a site for Chuck Lorre, the TV producer. On this site he seems to have some vanity cards that he shows at the end of his shows. This is what I’m learning from his wikipedia page and going on the site itself. The weirder thing about all this isn’t the website, but the person who owns the site. This paper is addressed to someone in Cobleskill, NY. This is my “hometown” (10 miles from home) where I went to college for 2.5 years. Then I graduated and went to school up at SUNY Potsdam (Potsdam,NY). This is the same college that Chuck Lorre attended many years ago. Though he dropped out, he came back to do a speech at a graduation a few years ago. I just find this connection between the information on this paper and me to be strange, in a good way.

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So this was what I found in Son of a Witch. I hope you enjoyed the first “From Inside The Pages” post to be (officially) published on A Life Among The Pages. It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these posts (too long if you ask me). If you’d like to read through what I’ve posted in the past here’s an easy link to my “From Inside The Pages” archive

Wo Kee Restaurant

Submitted by Bob in response to the post from The Ratman’s Notebook (http://tinyurl.com/cnjg7nc) :

I enjoyed seeing the card for Wo Kee Restaurant. From infancy until my early 20’s when it closed, Wo Kee on Doyers Street (yes, in Chinatown) was a frequent family dinner destination. My father had been eating there since the 1940’s, took my mother starting in the mid 50’s, me in the late 50’s and my brother thereafter. As a young boy they’d let me use a cleaver to cut the head off a cooked duck. This is the place where as a 3 year old with probably undiagnosed hyperactivity, I would disappear from the table, whereabouts unknown until a shriek from the other side of the restaurant revealed my having crawled on the floor and under  someone elses table. Very good cantonese food and seafood, and the first and best (sweet) hot & sour soup I ever had. Thanks for the memories. Where did you get the card from? By the way, it cannot be from the early 1950’s as the 5 number zip code did not come out until the early 60’s. As to area code, all of NYC was 212 back then so it was not necessary and for those out of NYC, everyone knew the area code was 212. 

Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas

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  For years I have been looking to be my hands on some poetry by Dylan Thomas. My luck finally lead me to find a copy of The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas. Aside from a few poems, namely Don’t Go Gentle Into That Good Night, I haven’t read much Thomas.  My want to see what […]