From: bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com   
      
   On 12/9/25 19:35, Titus G wrote:   
   > On 8/12/25 10:44, Christian Weisgerber wrote:   
   >> On 2025-12-02, James Nicoll  wrote:   
   >>   
   >>> Things I Wish I'd Known When Starting a Book Collection   
   >>   
   >> I think the typical issue is that people don't start out to make a   
   >> collection.  It sneaks up on you.  You buy books or calculators or   
   >> whatever and suddenly, OMG, they are everywhere, I'm caught in   
   >> Stanisław Lem's "Ciemność i pleśń", what do I do now?   
   >   
   > The television show, "Hoarders" (or something similar), shows the   
   > results of obsessive people who are not obsessive about WHAT they   
   > collect and when they are threatened with downsizing their collections,   
   > become extremely agitated because of the emotional attachment they have   
   > to their variety of possessions. Is book collecting any different or   
   > just another obsessive compulsive disorder?   
   >   
      
   	Well perhaps it comes from the era in which I grew up.  But books were   
   harder to come by when I was young and even the paperbacks from a few   
   years back are no longer in print.  I have emotional attachments to very   
   few   
   of the books I have accumulated but where will i find a copy to read if   
   I toss   
   the one i happen to have.  The SF section of the SFPL has lots of books but   
   some have been stolen and others are checked out frequently.  I may have   
   to give up reading books as my vision is getting worse.   
      
   	One of the early fantasy books I read from the Library in Fallon. Nevada   
   back in the 1940s were about a rather different Jack Armstrong than the   
   radio serial character.  The written Armstrong had studied with Eastern   
   mystics and had some inexactly specified power.  I guess that was   
   drawn from the Shadow who had learned from the same Eastern mystics   
   the power to make himself invisible even when he weilded his twin   
   Colt .45 automatics.  "The weed of Crime has bitter roots" but we learned   
   to smoke the flowers.   
   	   
   	Oh yes and before I stop writing has anyone else ever read Thorne   
   Smith from pre-War II?  I read manga and it seems to me that a lot of   
   the stories draw on Thorne Smith's work so I guess he was popular   
   in Japan.   
   	   
   	bliss   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)