A Review of what is happening in the Hi-Tech-And-Antique On Line Store. It is personal observations of the staff mixed in with information on new and interesting merchandise.
We decided to put all six books up for auction all at once. They are Graham Greene novels. Some of these books have been up at auction individually by others for quite a bit more. You decide the price for all six. He was a pervasive literary influence.
Many of you film fans may not know that Greene wrote the screenplay and later the novella for The Third Man. Orson Wells starred in the title role as a mysterious figure in post-War Vienna, and it is considered to be the best British film ever made.
Ministry of Fear, one of the books offered here was made into a movie starring Ray Milland. It is about a spy ring in war-time London. The Comedians, also offered was made into a movie with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Lots of suspense and sinister goings-on offered here. A seven day auction that started tonight.
We were rushing to get these out to auction tonight. Yes, that is right, these are all our auction items together. And as you can see, they are mostly dramatic in nature - plays and more plays for your in-house entertainment. Be theatrical, read a play.
For those of you who are readers, some material for your contemplation, erudition, amusement, and edification. Poetry, anthropology, science fiction, ghosts, plays, mental health, history and more. Most of these are fixed price store items. They are hard to find using ordinary searches, so click now or forever hold your peace, as they say in the movies.
You know what we like to sell - Books! Here are some of our latest selections. You won't find these by searches - you have to click here. They are newly listed, ready for your review. Most of them are Buy It Now! items. So you don't have to wait for somebody else to finish bidding up the price. Just click and pick your heart's desire.
Last Night everyone lined up to talk about the day's activities and take in the last glow of the daylight before turning in for the night. Anyone want a drink?
The almost unbelievable story of a man who arose from slavery to dominate an entire nation and beat back the might of the French military. He became President, but that was not enough to satiate his ambition. He crowned himself king and created discord and prosperity, majesty and nobility. He became enraptured with his might and power and became an autocratic despot who saw plots everywhere. This is the story of his life - in a 1928 1st edition hardback copy with marvelous drawings and wood-cut prints. This remains a definitive study of his life.
Find out more about Henry I of Haiti, a fascinating and dramatic part of history.
Friday's Time of Repose - Evening Arrives - Day Shift Turns In
Evening is a meditative time. You walk out in the street and birds are zooming around by the dozens as they take their last flight of the day. The sun has set in the West, and the birds call to each other to stretch their wings before they settle into the trees for their time of discussion about the day's activities. The last flicker of the afterglow shimmers in the clouds on the almost longest night of the year.
We have 7 Plays listed tonight (actually more), mostly from Broadway, a few that started out in London and migrated back to Broadway. We are liquidating a collection of plays going back decades so if you like these there are more in the "Play" section of our Hi-Tech-And-Antique eBay Store. The highlight of the collection is Glengarry Glen Ross that is giving our proof-readers some fitful reading because of the unusual spelling of the title. It was rewritten from the London/Broadway version given here into a movie version starring Jack Lemmon and Al Pacino among other notables. It is about some real-estate salesmen who cuss at each other nearly non-stop throughout the play. The movie had a similar drift, so if you have sensitive sensibilities or are easily offended, this is perhaps not the book for you.
The Three Plays by Thornton Wilder include "Our Town" which is reputed to be the most frequently produced play in America. It also won the Pulitzer Prize. It is offered along with "The Matchmaker" and "The Skin of Our Teeth" in the same volume.
The "Shirley Valentine" play is also combined in one volume with a second play, "One for the Road". Plays are great reading for anyone who likes to write, because you can see the essence of how the scripts are put together without being distracted by the acting which comes in movies and DVDs.
While the "19th Century Romanticism in Music" probably won't have a whole lot of Blogger World interest in this space (though there are a few of you out there, we know), there might be some more interest in the general population of visitors who might drift in during the near future, so we give the book a little nudge here in the text part of the description, because it actually contains little snippets of scores in the text for those who are musically literate. Life is so much richer when classical music is around. We have stacks of classical CD's when we want to take a break from our Bhangra Hip-Hop selections.
There are four new plays, and a book on how to golf. Can you ever know too much about golf? The plays are part of our growing collection... We have lots more plays to come. The best is the "Don't Drink the Water" script by Woody Allen that was made into both a play and two versions of the movie.
Featured book is the green one - "The Angel Factory" - Which asks the younger readers - what if your parents were not really your parents? An interesting tale of a family that was too perfect and too orderly. And how a certain young man slowly unravels the mystery of his own life.
There is a book on headaches and what to do about them. Supertime! Supertime! is about a certain cartoon beagle. Heechee Rendezvous is one of a series of how humans discover the secret technologies of the Heechees and what it means - a science fiction puzzle. There is a early book on cults, and what to do about them, one of the earliest of its kind. There is a listing of this month's British Vogue as a fixed price item. And there is a 2nd much larger book about a certain cartoon beagle and his neigborhood human friends. And lastly a novel of what it is like to live in San Francisco's Chinatown.
Just listed. This is a seminal 60's novel, if not one of the prototypes for what came after. It is required reading for anyone who claims expertise in things sixtyish. This was Richard Fariña's first literary effort, but he died in a motorcycle accident a couple of days after its publication.
He was an influence on Thomas Pynchon, who we featured recently, and who wrote a short blurb on the back of the book. This is the edition that college students took to their campuses by the thousands, with the irreverent cover that irritated an older and more staid generation of teachers and administrators.
Here is a quote:
They were standing on the perimeter of an expansive, seemingly endless salt flat, its parched surface cracked and fissured. Each of them staring at a single point on the horizon, delicately poising chilled martinis in their hands. The oil-cowboy with his Stetson eased over on the back of his head, a thumb hooked in a tooled fiesta belt; the strawberry blondes fingering bracelets and rings: the movie star cocking a well-trained eyebrow, striking a pose; the barefoot muse twisting the ends of her long, freely falling hair; Gnossos trembling, lips quivering, trying to control his voluntary muscles, tugging against the weight of silver in his rucksack. From the east, the ocher and orange sun bleeding profusely, steadily, into the semidark transparence of the dawn.
They waited, not speaking, standing line abreast, staring. They all knew it would happen, they had shuffled into the night’s end to be witnesses, but when it occurred they were nonetheless surprised. The sky changed, the entire translucent dome stunned by the swiftness of the shimmering atomic flash. The light drove their once tiny shadows to a terrifying distance in the desert, making them seem like titans. Then it shrank, the aurora crashing insanely backward, like a film in reverse, toppling, swimming into a single white-hot bulge, a humming lump, a festering core. It hovered inches above the horizon, dancing, waiting almost as if it were taking a stoked breath, then swelled in puffing spasms, poking high into the stratosphere, edging out the pale skyrocket vapor trails at either side, the ball going sickly yellow, the shock wave releasing its roar, the entire spectacle catching fire, blazing chaotically, shaming the paltry sun.
