Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Martha Graves collection

About a month ago, I decided to try booking at the Fort Myers Goodwill stores.  There are several and I enter their addresses into our Garmin and plotted a course before heading off for a sunny afternoon ride on the motorcycle.  On this particular day, I planned on making four stops.  I basically planned to stay on 41 all the way to Fort Myers stopping at the Punta Gorda and North Fort Myers GWs and working my way south across the Caloosahatchee river to the stores on Palm Beach and Cleveland avenues.  It is a very nice ride through a lot of open country, over several bridges and finally over the Caloosahatchee and into Fort Myers.  The booking was not too good.  The last store I stopped at was the Palm Beach store which is just outside the downtown area about a block off the river in a fairly poor section of the city.  The store was very clean, but the book section was pretty thin.  Really nothing at all until I got to a bottom shelf in the corner.  Here I spotted the first Martha Grimes book.  Now these books are smaller than the normal hardcover and that would indicate that they are book club editions. Upon opening the book, I found a price on the jacket and then on the title page I found in bold print an indication that the book was a second printing.
Now my interest was piqued and I began to go through the other sections (paperbacks and children's books) more carefully.  Ultimately, I found three more Martha Grimes books.  Two of them were first printings and two that were second printings.  It was a pretty good way to end the day.  I wasn't sure how good the books were - even though I knew that they were her second, third, fourth and fifth works.  I had never read Grimes, but I was very much taken with the covers and with the quality of her reputation as a writer.  Upon reaching home I found that these books were very good finds.  The Old Fox Deceiv'd values out at about 35.00 in the second printing and The Anodyne Necklace in a first printing values out at about 40.00.  I now have seven of her first nine works in first or second printings and I am looking forward to reading and writing about them for this blog.

1 comment:

  1. Hey, Tins, I know of a couple of great books to collect ...

    Btw ... gotta kill that word verification thing!

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