Those of us behind the counter enjoy the Romance Cover contest in February so much we’ve decided to add another – so here it is!  The 1st Sci Fi Cover Contest!  Vote on your “favorite” in order to enter a drawing and a chance for a $25 East Side Books Gift Certificate at the end of the month.  I have not been searching out classic Sci Fi covers too long, but it is not hard to find some potential winners.  There are several decades to choose from and different Pokies styles, although buxom women seem to be as common as the romance covers…hmmm, definitely more cat faces though.

Here are the candidates:

#1     Firebird by Charles L. Harness ( 1981)

#2      Conan and the Sorcerer by Andrew J Offutt (1978)

#3     Love Conquers All by Fred Saberhagen (1974)

#4     The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs

#5     Haydn of Mars by Al Sarrantonio (2005)

You may vote on line or in the store once per day – come in and get a close up look at these wonderful artworks!

The famous and wealthy author Larry McMurtry also owns one of the largest used bookstores in the country – Booked Up – a mecca for book lovers without question.  He has decided to downsize, which is of course making the news.  We clean out by going to the Choo Choo Swapmeet, he has an auction of thousands of titles and makes national headlines. 

I just have to share two things from the Booked Up website, maybe East Side Books and Booked Up  really have a few things in common!  First from the Frequently Asked Questions:

I also want to share McMurtry’s explanation for the clean out:

TO OUR GUESTS:

The several hundred thousand books that we are putting in play constitute a kind of anthology of American bookshops past.  In our forty-one years as booksellers we have bought twenty six bookshops and some two hundred personal libraries, some humble, some grand.

So why push them out?

Because we believe that in the book world migration is healthy:  old pages await new eyes.  Yesterday in Lubbock, Texas I found a copy of Sons and Lovers in the oil-cloth Modern Library with my bookplate in it.  Twenty eight thousand volumes have my bookplate in them;  they reside in my big house in Archer City, and yet this one strayed.  How it got to Lubbock I’ll likely never know.  It’s home again now;  but hundreds of thousands of its cousins will be flooding into the great river of books that delights and refreshes.  Good reading and good luck!

     Larry McMurtry

In the book world, migration is healthy.  Old pages await new eyes.  We have a few creatively shelved old pages awaiting new eyes, come find some for your library!

In the early 1900’s, Harvard President Charles W. Eliot stated that a liberal education could be obtained by spending fifteen minutes a day reading from a collection of books that would fit on a five-foot bookshelf. Publisher P.F. Collier and Son took Eliot at his word, and asked him to compile the volumes of literature necessary to create a five-foot liberal education library. Eliot did, and the result was the wonderful Harvard Classics.

First published in 1909, the Harvard Classics are a fifty-one volume set. Each book is approximately 400 to 450 pages, and texts, such as The Odyssey by Homer or His Autobiography by Ben Franklin, are reprinted in their entirety.

P.F. Collier and Son sold over 350,000 sets in the twenty years that they were available. Says East Side owner, Diane Doonan, “The Harvard Classics were a new concept and became very popular. Everyone wanted to be self-educated.”

Along the same lines of the Harvard Classics, we have volumes of Will and Ariel Durant’s eleven-book series The Story of Civilization. The first volume, Our Oriental Heritage, was published in 1935. The remaining volumes were penned over a span of forty years. Although The Story of Civilization was intended to be an overview of Western history, the series ends with The Age of Napoleon due to the death of the Durants.

Both the Harvard Classics volumes and The Story of Civilization series are much sought after these days, and are often used for homeschool curriculum. We have individual volumes of Harvard Classics available for around $6.00 each. They are located along the top of the shelves in our Literature section. Please ask for assistance. We also have a complete set of Harvard Classics that will be sold as a whole. If interested, please speak with one of our staff.  We have many of the books in The Story of Civilization series available as well, and these are located on top of the Psychology section in the Non-Fiction room.

Come browse these classical series and enhance your reading resume today.

Something new for sales this month – since so many authors have April birthdays, we are offering 20% off on their books on their birthday.  That way you can celebrate your favorites!  We have a list in the store, but if you do some research and show us another birthday author, you can have the sale price too!  I’ll try to make sure we get the daily list on the Facebook page at least.

Also, it is National Poetry Month, with some fun upcoming activities, and all poetry on sale all month.  Religion, Nature and Inspiration will also be on sale, and maybe more, who knows.  Keep checking back for updates.