When It Rains, It Pours

My bi-annual computer meltdown has just occurred on my desktop/server, so I am going to have to push back the upcoming auction of antiquarian Watchtower items (see here).

I will get it going in early September if I can manage to sort out what needs restoration and what is best left to that big data dump in the sky. My next equipment purchases are a new desktop AND A BACKUP DRIVE, thereby giving me hope of breaking the cycle of crash, burn, lose data.

In the meantime, prayers from those who are so inclined are always welcome! And "I-told-you-sos" from techies are assumed, so y'all don't need to weigh in. I've been telling myself so all day.

Idiopathic*

*"Idiopathic is an adjective used primarily in medicine meaning arising spontaneously or from an obscure or unknown cause. From Greek ἴδιος, idios (one's own) + παθος, pathos (suffering), it means approximately 'a disease of its own kind.' "
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiopathic

Also, "from the Latin, meaning 'we're idiots, because we don't know what's causing it.'" -- Hugh Laurie as Dr. Gregory House in the TV series "House."

My blogging has been light because my husband has had a recurrence of his deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary emboli (PE) in both lungs. It was a little scary last weekend. He took our son to kendo class on Saturday, and wound up unable to finish his own lessons because he became suddenly short-winded. He could barely speak after walking from the car to the house when they got back.

I took him to the hospital over his mild protests, where they admitted him after looking at his CT scans and finding that he had clots in both lungs. Fortunately, he did not have to stay more than one night.

Rich's DVT/PE is idiopathic (see above). He's not elderly (his first occurrence was 10 years ago at age 39), doesn't travel by plane for hours, isn't pregnant, hasn't had surgery, etc. When he used to make platelet donations they noted that he could donate twice as many as the average person, so maybe that has something to do with it. The "Why" of the situation eludes the doctors.

Things are pretty much back to normal, so work and blogging are back on track. Deo gratias.

Old Lighthouse Books Upcoming Auction Alert

I'm pleased to announce two special auctions which I will be posting to eBay within the next two weeks:

1. A Millennial Dawn "Missionary Envelope": Zion's Watch Tower of September, 1887, mentions a new campaign to raise awareness of Pastor Russell's teaching as set down in The Plan of the Ages. It involved using envelopes with Bible verses and an ad for Volume I of Millennial Dawn. One of these envelopes and an accompanying letter will be auctioned on eBay. The letter makes mention of a Pilgrim (traveling speaker for the Watch Tower Society) named "Jonson" who was a "converted Jew." This has to be P. S. L. Johnson, who later severed ties with the Watch Tower and began his own group, the Laymen's Home Missionary Movement. As of the writing of this letter, though (March, 1906) , he was still a member of the International Bible Students:


2. Old Theology Quarterly No. 25: The Only Name; A Criticism of Bishop Foster's New Gospel. This item contains a critique of a Methodist bishop's dissent from Protestant teaching on the salvation of people who never heard the Gospel:

Prices and starting date are TBD.

Book Larnin'

The serious student of the book arts will pay a visit to the website of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The school, founded in 1983, provides courses, lectures, and online information about printing, binding, identification, bibliography, and other essential knowledge about books for the collector and dealer.

If you can't afford the tuition or the time to attend the school, you can take advantage of the reading lists for the various courses. They're an education in themselves.

Now THIS Is Good for Its Age!

We live in exciting times indeed. The Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest complete copy of the New Testament, is going up on the Internet.

The Ironic Catholic ...

... has a subtitle that is da bomb! It's from one of my favorite authors:

"You shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you odd."

-- Flannery O'Connor

Reality Is Overrated

"Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity."

G. K. Chesterton

Across the Pond

My friend Donald runs an Amazon.co.uk bookshop called Clyde Coast Books. He carries a range of academic texts and other literature. I am grateful to him for my newest used book, the British paperback edition of the Discworld Companion.

He's a nice guy, too.

So if you're from the U. K. or just in the market for reasonably priced British books, take a look.

The Test of Time

"One should never read the latest books. Instead, wait for a few years and watch most of them disappear into well-deserved oblivion. This eliminates much unnecessary reading." -- Somerset Maugham

A Real Character

William Dalton provides insight into Steven T. Byington, a true eccentric New Englander, over at the Andover Townsman website. He provides some interesting background on one of the odder figures in the world of Watchtower book collecting.

Byington was a New Englander whose main claim to fame among WT collectors is his role as translator of a unique English-language Bible. He himself was a Congregationalist (more on that in the article). His translation was not published during his lifetime, but somehow the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society came across his manuscript. They bought the rights to it because it used the name "Jehovah" extensively throughout the Old Testament.

But even in death Byington had the last word. The terms of sale mandated that his original notes and forward had to be included in any published version. His original spellings and verse notation were kept as well.

More fun facts are to be had at the Townsman. Take a look!

Open Library

Open Library's stated goal is to have "One web page for every book ever published." Not too grandiose, is it? Then again, who'd have thought that Wikipedia would take off the way it did?

The project is in need of contributors who can provide book information, among other things. It promises to be a gold mine of information for collectors of all sorts of books, so head over there and see if you can add to the general store of knowledge.

Discworld Blues

My whole family has been tearing through Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. I have only one more book left to read (aside from the young adult novels and the Science of Discworld books): Small Gods. I have just finished reading Carpe Jugulum ("Seize the Throat"), wherein vampires take up unwelcome residence in the kingdom of Lancre.

I was introduced to Pratchett's novels by other bloggers, especially on Dale Price's Dyspeptic Mutterings blog (see sidebar). I was uninterested until I read a synopsis of Hogfather, a twisted take on Santa Claus. The concept alone was laugh-out-loud hilarious, and the book didn't disappoint.

You see the Hogfather, Discworld's version of Santa, has gone missing. In order to save Hogswatch (Christmas and New Year's Eve all rolled into one) and human belief in intangible things, someone must take over and deliver the presents. That someone is . . . Death:



(From the DVD version of Hogfather )

Before that, though, I read the two introductory novels, The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. They tell the story of Rincewind, a failed wizard, and the Discworld's first-ever tourist, Twoflower.

Those books were recently made into a single TV movie by SkyOne in the U. K. SkyOne wasn't sure when it will be released onto DVD, nor when it will be available in the U. S. The movie stars David Jason, Sean Astin, Tim Curry, and Jeremy Irons:



One of my favorite characters is the Patrician. He's the ruler of the city of Ankh-Morpork, who believes in the concept of "One man, one vote" -- as long as he's the "one man." His character has had some of the most interesting development of any in the series.

But now I've almost run out of Discworld books to read, which is very depressing indeed.

What's Your Story?

If you collect books, what do you collect and what started you off? My personal obsession with Watchtower literature began in the 1970s, when a Witness left The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life at my house. It didn't really take off, though, until I came across a copy of The Harp of God by J. F. Rutherford at a library book sale in the early 1980s.

Feel free to share your stories in the combox.

Good for Its Age

You've seen it before. It's all over eBay, and you can't read five listings on any of the major book search engines before it jumps out at you.

It's a phrase you learn to drop quickly once you've spent any time in the book business. You start to wince when you hear it; it's like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Prospective sellers come up to you, hope in their eyes, and tender for your consideration a tattered, worn, ghost-of-its-former-self book. They utter the horrible words, and expect to be told that indeed, their decrepit volume is a prize. After all, it was printed in the nineteenth century!

You, on the other hand, know that there are at least a hundred copies to be had of that particular title, at least half of which look as if they'd just dropped off the press yesterday.

Age is not equal to value. Condition + scarcity + demand = value. It's true for books, just as it's true for cheese, fine wines, and furniture. Keep any of these in the wrong conditions, and you have fodder for the fireplace, and maybe vinegar for your salad.

For instance:
The Finished Mystery (1917) is much sought-after by collectors of Watchtower/Jehovah's Witness books. It is the posthumous work of Pastor Charles Taze Russell, the founder of the Watch Tower Society, and the seventh volume in his Studies in the Scriptures series. Auction prices vary, but an original, intact copy in this binding can retail for over $100 in Fine condition.

This copy has seen better days. The covers are stained, the spine is faded and chipped, the hinges are broken and the super is showing. To boot, the binder made a boo-boo and sewed in a duplicate signature while leaving out the proper one, so that there is a page 417 after page 448.

I'd be lucky to get $25 for this gem.

On the other hand, the copy to the right is in comparatively good shape: You can see a bit of wear along the edges and along the spine, but it's a nice tight copy. This one might go for $75 to $100, depending on the market.

But there are still nicer ones to be had out there, and you wouldn't have to wait too long before one turned up.

When I was in New York in April, I paid a visit to Argosy Books, which has some fine examples of 15th and 16th century books for sale, with beautiful leather bindings and paper that has retained its suppleness and whiteness long after books made with 20th century pulp have crumbled into dust. Even many of these were not priced over a couple of hundred dollars. Why? Demand, for one. Not too many people are interested in theological works in Latin by writers of lesser stature than a Thomas Aquinas.

So when someone says, "It's good for its age," let the buyer beware.

It's Funny Because It's True