What is your earliest memory of realizing that books were cool?
For me it was sifting though a box of disheveled, disorganized stacks on the sidewalk outside a used bookstore in my home town. I was probably about 8 years old.
The designs. The feel. The smell.
I still seek out used books shops in every city I visit. It’s a guilty pleasure. There’s no space on the shelves. Can’t stop. Won't stop.
These days there are digital book bins you can rifle through and if you get on the right lists you’ll get alerts when blowout sales happen. It’s not the same as a dusty box in a forgotten corner of a shop. But still pretty good for feeding curiosity and opening rabbit holes.
This week at Ink & Time, we’re bringing you 10 picks curated from AbeBooks sales over the weekend. Some are 60% off the seller’s list price. Many are still available. I grabbed a few. Some descriptions below are clipped from seller pages: it’s not plagiarism, just free marketing.
If you like discovering new books that are free to read, check out the Ink & Time Top 100 Public Domain List.
Just refer a friend to subscribe and we’ll send it to you automatically. It’s organised by categories with clickable links to full texts.
Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven, Mark Twain
Published by Harper & Brothers, 1909
Despite the fact that many would judge this book to be a bit irreverent vis-à-vis the Christian belief system, it remains a popular item of Mark Twain’s list of books, albeit not very common in the book trade. Please find: Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven by Mark Twain. This small hard cover book (5 ½ x 8 ¼ inches, 121 pages) was published by Harper & Brothers of New York dated 1909 and a First Edition with the same date on title and copyright pages. The book opens with a tissue-guarded drawing from Albert Levering as the Frontispiece but there are no other illustrations. It was the last Mark Twain book published while he was still alive.
The story follows Captain Elias Stormfield on his decades long cosmic journey to Heaven; his accidental misplacement after racing a comet; his short-lived interest in singing and playing the harp (generated by his preconceptions of heaven); and the general obsession of souls with the celebrities of Heaven such as Adam, Moses, and Elijah, who according to Twain become as distant to most people in Heaven as living celebrities are on Earth. Twain uses this story to show his view that the common conception of Heaven is ludicrous, and points out the incongruities of such beliefs with his characteristic adroit usage of hyperbole.
Such, Such Were the Joys, George Orwell
Published by Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1953
As noted on the dust jacket: George Orwell s uncompromising honesty, as well as his refusal to take anything for granted, characterizes all his writing. The eleven pieces brought together here range from Anti-Semitism in Britain, to his analysis of the motivations of writers, Why I Write. Inside the Whale is perhaps the most balanced appraisal yet made of that controversial figure, Henry Miller. Looking Back on the Spanish War is written from the perspective shared by few men, for although Orwell was wounded while fighting with the Loyalists, he did not hesitate to expose the Communist betrayal in Spain.
This small book (5 ½ x 8 ¼ inches, 230 pages) was published by Harcourt, Brace and Company, dated 1953 and noted as the first American edition (so stated). The book is bound in kelly green cloth hard covers with gilt titles on the spine. It is protected by a pictorial dust jacket.
The Croquet Player, H.G. Wells
Published by The Viking Press of New York, 1937
A 1936 novella by H. G. Wells, "a sort of ghost story." It has been called "a short allegory written under the stimulus of the Spanish War." Georgie, a gentleman with "soft hands and an ineffective will," is dependent on his wealthy aunt, Miss Frobisher. He is "refreshingly unimaginative." Croquet is his and his aunt's "especial gift," and he and his aunt play often as they "move about a lot." While relaxing one summer day on a terrace at Les Noupets in Normandy, Georgie strikes up a conversation with an English doctor named Dr. Finchatton, who tells him his life story.
A review of The Croquet Player in White Dwarf #60, stated that "It's evocation of nameless evil haunting English marshland is better than anything Lovecraft could do; but the horror relates to pre-historic savageries of our ancestors, a haunting [...] from deep inside our own minds. As civilization totters, the blood-spattered caveman begins to re-emerge. Read this; remember what happened soon after its publication; look around you today; and allow yourself a shudder."
The Principles of Scientific Management, Frederick Taylor
Published by Harper & Brothers of New York, 1916
Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856 March 21, 1915) was an American mechanical engineer. He was widely known for his methods to improve industrial efficiency. He was one of the first management consultants. Taylor was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era (1890s 1920s).
In 1911, Taylor summed up his efficiency techniques in his book The Principles of Scientific Management which, in 2001, Fellows of the Academy of Management voted the most influential management book of the twentieth century. It is a vintage copy of this famous book, in near fine condition, which is on offer here. This medium-sized but slender hard cover book (6 x 9 inches, 144 pages) was published by Harper & Brothers of New York, dated 1916. Condition: This book is in near fine condition. The hard cover glisten despite their age and are essentially unblemished.
THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN, Thomas Merton
Published by Harcourt, Brace and Company of New York, 1948
Thomas Merton OCSO (January 31, 1915 December 10, 1968) was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. On May 26, 1949, he was ordained to the Catholic priesthood and given the name "Father Louis". He was a member of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, near Bardstown, Kentucky, living there from 1941 to his death. Merton wrote more than 50 books in a period of 27 years, mostly on spirituality, social justice and a quiet pacifism, as well as scores of essays and reviews.
Among Merton's most enduring works is his bestselling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948). His account of his spiritual journey inspired scores of World War II veterans, students, and teenagers to explore offerings of monasteries across the US. It is on National Review’s list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the century. This small hard cover book (5 ¾ x 8 ¼ inches, 420 pages) was published by Harcourt, Brace and Company of New York dated 1948. This copy is bound in black boards with bright gilt titles on the spine and is generally recognized as a First Edition although there was an earlier version with beige boards (very difficult to find).
World Enough and Time, Robert Penn Warren
Published by Random House, 1950
In the admixture of wilderness and elegant society that was 1826 Kentucky, Jeremiah Beaumont, a brilliant, imaginative lawyer, stood trial for murdering his benefactor and father figure, the politician Colonel Cassius Fort. Now all the documents are in hand to reconstruct Beaumont's life story -- his crime, his trial, his ultimate sin and punishment -- and the historian-narrator of World Enough and Time sets about doing just that. Based on the famous murder case known as the Kentucky Tragedy, World Enough and Time is, like its precursor All the King's Men, a fictional wonder that personifies history, philosophy, politics, and passion.
Happy Days- 1880-1892, H.L. Mencken
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1940
Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 January 29, 1956) was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements. His satirical reporting on the Scopes Trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also gained him attention.
As a scholar, Mencken is known for The American Language, a multi-volume study of how the English language is spoken in the United States. As an admirer of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, he was an outspoken opponent of organized religion, theism, censorship, populism, and representative democracy, the last of which he viewed as a system in which inferior men dominated their superiors. Mencken was a supporter of scientific progress and… an open critic of economics. Mencken opposed the American entry into World War I and World War II.
This medium-sized hard cover book (6 x 8 ¾ inches, 315 pages) was published by Alfred A. Knopf as a Borzoi Book dated 1940 and the First Edition (so stated). The book is bound in an oatmeal weave cloth with red & blue titles on cover and spine. It is protected by a printed paper dust jacket. There is only one illustration in the book, a photo of Mencken at the age of eight.
The Coming World Civilization, William Ernest Hocking
Published by Harper & Brothers of New York, 1956
William Ernest Hocking (August 10, 1873 June 12, 1966) was an American idealist philosopher at Harvard University. He continued the work of his philosophical teacher Josiah Royce (the founder of American idealism) in revising idealism to integrate and fit into empiricism, naturalism and pragmatism.
He said that metaphysics has to make inductions from experience: "That which does not work is not true." His major field of study was the philosophy of religion, but his 22 books included discussions of philosophy and human rights, world politics, freedom of the press, the philosophical psychology of human nature; education; and more. This small hard cover book has another distinguishing characteristic; it is inscribed to Alfred Eisenstaedt, the long-time Life Magazine photographer. The book is bound in blue papered boards with a quarter spine in black and bold white titles on the spine; it is protected by a printed paper dust jacket. This book (5 ¾ x 8 ½ inches, 210 pages) was published by Harper & Brothers of New York dated 1956 and I believe the First Edition.
The Process, Brion Gysin
Published by Jonathan Cape, London, 1970
The Process is a novel by Brion Gysin which was published in 1969. Gysin was a painter and composer, and also collaborated with Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs on many occasions. The Process was his first full-length novel. Described by The Overlook Press (which published a posthumous edition in 1987) as "a powerfully psychological novel", The Process tells the story of a professor named Ulys O. Hanson who sets out on a pilgrimage across the Sahara Desert which turns out to be a hallucinatory experience. The Process is notable not only for its evocative and poetic descriptions of the Sahara Desert and Sufi culture, but also for the history it documents - most notably, Gysin's encounters with L. Ron Hubbard and The Master Musicians of Jajouka.
The Middlemen : A Satire, Christine Brooke-Rose
Published by Secker & Warburg, London, 1961
It is the sixties in the century of middlemen. Meet the cast: Rusty Conway, Chief Public Relations Officer of U.V.I, a company whose dress fabrics, manufactured from sand and saltpetre, have an unfortunate tendency to explode; Serena Scott-Buttery, Rusty's beleaguered psychoanalyst, desperate to slink up the property ladder and fend off menacing contractors, mortgagors, and TV producers; Serena's sister Stella, a flamboyant Euro-hopping leech whose affectations test Serena's patience; Sales Promotion manager Harry Thorpe, with his carefully preserved Yorkshire accent; and Hughie Hill, producer of Focus on Facts.
At parties, in their offices, in their homes, they are all so busy "relating" to each other that they lose sight of their own identities. In their midst, at unpredictable intervals, bursts Serena's remarkable twin sister Stella; and perhaps of all of them she alone does not qualify as a middlewoman. She is maddening, quarrelsome, flamboyant and absurd. She takes obscure jobs in obscure parts of the world and in retrospect invests them with a bogus glamour. She quarrels with everyone and makes nothing of her life. But she is alive, and of all of them is the only one who at the end remains so.
The last of Brooke-Rose's realist novels, published in 1961, The Middlemen is a scathing social critique and hilarious satire, as well as a telling portent as to how the emerging decades would develop. Introduction by Francis Booth.
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