Off the prompt "cuddles."

Last call for cheap books, kind of an eclectic lot, Shakespeare and Beatles and random SFF anthologies. Most of these are pretty well used, cover wear, etc. Let me know your zip code and I'll calculate media rate shipping from that and book weight.

Let me know before Friday night if you want any of these, because on Saturday they're going to Good Will.

For the Shakespeare, I am including publisher/edition for those who care; most of them are perfectly readable modern editions but I feel I should note that the "new hudson" editions were printed circa 1910 and while they have the same kinds of notes I tend to expect, they are visibly old. Merrills is 1910 as well, and Arden is good gracious, 1898.

Hardcover - $2
Skywalking: the life and films of George Lucas by Dale Pollock (1983, so no current or prequels)
Aliens from Analog (anthology, contents)
Reel Future (anthology, contents)
Pendragon Chronicles (anthology, contents)
Hal Leonard Guitar Method, books 1-3 (this is actually comb bound not hardcover, but it also includes CDs, so I'm tossing it in this list for pricing.)
America, the book, from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart
I Me Mine by George Harrison
Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles
Blackbird: The Life and Times of Paul McCartney by Geoffrey Giuliano
McCartney: The Definitive Biography by Chris Salewicz
The Baby Train and Other Lusty Urban Legends by Jan Harold Brunvand

Trade Paperback (or larger) - $1.50
Save the cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting you'll ever need by Blake Snyder
How to Write for Television by Madeline DiMaggio
Writing Scripts Hollywood Will Love by Katherine Atwell Herbert
Science Fiction: a historical anthology (contents)
Henry the Fourth, Part I, Shakespeare, Norton
King Lear, Shakespeare, Kittredge
Hamlet, Shakespeare, St Martin's Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism
Classical Mythology by Mark Morford and Robert Lenardon
Completely MAD: A History of the Comic Book and Magazine
MAD about the Eighties: the best of the decade
MAD about the Seventies: the best of the decade
MAD about the Sixties: the best of the decade
MAD about the Movies
The Birth of the Beatles by Sam Leach
Brothel: Mustang Ranch and its Women by Alexa Albert
Dante, the Divine Comedy, Inferno, Italian, English translation by John Sinclair
Star Trek: Q's Guide to the Continuum
Cowboy Slang by Edgar R. "Frosty" Potter
All I really need to know I learned from watching Star Trek by Dave marinaccio
Quotable Star Trek by Jill Sherwin

Paperbacks - $1
Teach Yourself Film Studies by Warren Buckland
Twelfth Night, Shakespeare, signet
Othello, Shakespeare, folger
Tempest, Shakespeare, new hudson
Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare, folger
Anthony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare, Kittredge
As You Like It, Shakespeare, new hudson
Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare, Arden
Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, Merrill's
Macbeth, Shakespeare, folger
Midsummer night's dream, Shakespeare, folger
Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare, folger
Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare, bantam
Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare, signet
Second Shepherd's play
The Fantastic Adventures of Robin Hood (anthology, contents)
Isaac Asimov's Magical Worlds of Fantasy: Curses (anthology, contents)
Isaac Asimov's Magical Worlds of Fantasy: Ghosts (anthology, contents)
50 Short Science Fiction Tales (anthology, and with nothing so tidy as a table of contents, here's the list of reprint permissions)
UFOs: A Manual for the Millennium by Phil Cousineau
Anne Frank's Tales From the Secret Annex
Dutchman and the Slave: Two Plays by LeRoi Jones
House of Desires in a new translation by Catherine Boyle
The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder
Our Town by Thornton Wilder
Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays
Life is a Dream, Calderon
Beowulf, trans Burton Raffel
I Owe Russian $1200 by Bob Hope (resisting urge to make political joke here)
Strange and Amazing Facts About Star Trek by Daniel Cohen
Separated at Birth? (Meme of a bygone era, this is a collection of photographs of celebrities that look like other celebrities)

Hey everyone clearing my bookshelves a bit, combination moving in a month and I want to move less, and a few bucks would be nice. I'm in CA, so I will calculate your shipping at media rate from there, and like, I will ship beyond the contiguous 48? But I'm pretty sure it will be exorbitantly expensive, so? Up to you? But yeah, cheap books, a few cheap DVDs, prices listed below, let me know what you want and your zip code so I can let you know how much shipping is. (In a couple of days. After I finish visiting niqaeli.)

Paperbacks: used books, cover wear, etc. $2 each.
Contact by Carl Sagan
The Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison (omnibus, books 1-3)
The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted by Harry Harrison
The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You! by Harry Harrison
A Stainless Steel Rat is Born by Harry Harrison
2010 by Arthur C Clarke
3001 by Arthur C Clarke
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
Children of the Night by Dan Simmons
The Defector by Evelyn Anthony
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire

Manga books: these are in very good condition,
My Cat Loki, volumes 1 and 2, by Bettina Kurkoski $3 for both
Planet Ladder, volumes 1 to 3, by Yuri Narushima $5 for all 3

Trade Paperbacks: good condition, $3
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Neffenegger
Wicked by Gregory Maguire
The Great Book of Amber (omnibus, vols 1-10) by Roger Zelazny

Hardcover: $3 each, only the last one has a dust jacket
Endymion by Dan Simmons
Magic Kingdom for Sale--Sold! by Terry Brooks
Stainless Steel Rat for President by Harry Harrison
Darwin Awards by Wendy Northcutt

DVDs: $7 each
The Illusionist
Martian Child
Hurt Locker
Clue
Some Like It Hot

Audiobook on CDs: I dunno, $3?
Behind the Canvas by Alexander Vance




ETA: or like, make me an offer?
ETA: prices lowered 5/17

(x-posted from tumblr)

so i've been reading a bunch because my weird muscle thing makes books the most easily held form of media for me at the moment, and when I was doing a, well, honestly, semi-random above-the-waist draw from my shelves, I pulled out a book that I remembered as being id candy but i wasn't sure it was actually good, called Shadow by Anne Logston.

Shadow is a 500+ yr old elf, an extremely experienced thief, and cheerfully promiscuous. She sleeps with three different men in the first book, and also related the time she got her and her best friend Lady Donya out of a pickle with a band of highway robbers by... having an orgy with all of them, basically. Elven culture in general seems to be wired this way; most of her sexual encounters start off with her asking, "Well, aren't you going to greet me properly?" In addition, elves have sufficient difficulty conceiving that whenever an elf woman is fertile, it's tradition to grab as many elf dudes as she can find and "dance the high circle." Shadow herself was a high circle baby.

Most of the important characters in the book are women - Shadow's best friend, Donya, human warrior hero type; the mysterious assassin Blade; Celene, Donya's mother and one of the city leaders, and a magic worker who helps Shadow with some key plot points. The world is set up... not without misogyny? For instance, Shadow has to escape a rape attempt at one point, from men whose justification that "all elves are slutty" sounds a lot like real world "she was asking for it" bullshit. But it's set up so that women can take on these different societal roles - city leader, shopkeeper, assassin, guildmistress, warrior - and it's not remarkable, or unheard of. Also, it passes Bechdel like, every 5 minutes.

My conclusion upon finishing my reread was it was trashy in all the best ways, and I adored it.

I followed up by rereading another book that I recalled to be similar in terms of fantasy faux medieval setting and plot (female protagonist received a piece of jewelry that everyone and their uncle wants to kill her over; she uncovers plottiness in trying to survive and figure out WHY), The Raven Ring by Patricia C Wrede. (The other reason these books remind me of each other is another piece of id candy for me: hair. Shadow has a pile of hair on her head equal to her five centuries, which she has to keep talking people out of calling her Matriarch for, and styles of braids are likewise signifiers in Raven Ring, with Eleret asking a friend to give her a battle braid when matters escalate.)

Wrede is a better known, better recognized author than Logston (Wrede's gotten some ALA awards). She writes good prose, better prose, better dialogue I think - there are a couple of exchanges I have dogeared in my copy of this book, that I remain really fond of - but I actually came away disappointed on the feminism front. Yes, the book has a female protagonist, Eleret, but the next two characters in the line-up are male - Lord Daner, and Karvonnen the rogue - and worse, as a B-plot they're competing for her affections, and at the end of the novel she chooses one to take home with her (a fairly serious commitment, especially since she hadn't realized they were both romantically interested in her until late in the game). (Compare, Shadow gets laid a lot, but none of her partners think they're gonna go steady or whatever; one gets as far as asking if she's going to be staying long in the city where the story's set and she's like "ahahahah no i don't stick around long enough to see my human buddies get old, it's depressing." There's also, then, no competition between Shadow's partners; in the final scene, where they are sorting out what all happened and drinking together, two of them are there as her friends.)

The supplementary characters (characters whose purpose is additional info/plot propeller) in Raven Ring tend to be male more often, too. Eleret's going to claim the belongings of her dead mother from the military; the military commander is male. So is the magical Adept she seeks advice from. There's a junior magical apprentice, Prill, who is female, but she seems mostly there for flavor; there's one or two female magical experts who are mentioned but remain entirely offscreen. While Shadow passes Bechdel fairly damn often, I had to think pretty hard to come up with scenes where Raven Ring did. Do Prill and Eleret talk about anything but Lord Daner or Adept Climeral? Still not sure. Prill is basically the only positively portrayed female character besides Eleret (her mom doesn't count since she's dead). I finally recalled that Eleret does pass Bechdel with an antagonist, who wants to talk to her about the ring, and with Daner's aunt, who Eleret asks for advice regarding her card reading. Daner's aunt - all of Daner's female relations - are treated somewhat dismissively, as if they are all silly and annoying because they are feminine.

And they are traditionally feminine, in the societally prescribed roles and dresses that seem a lot more like standard fantasy medieval. Sure, Eleret can fight and would prefer to be in leggings instead of skirts, and her mother was in the army - but that's only HER people's culture, the Cilhar aren't like everyone else, the Cilhar are odd, Daner keeps getting in her way because he thinks he's protecting a helpless maiden, his sisters are aghast that she doesn't wear a fancy dress down to dinner.

so overall i found the quality YA novel to be one that elevated a female protagonist by setting her against other women, one step forward two steps back; while the trashy women's adventure book had women with women friends helping each other; and also honestly having healthier relationships with men in terms of openness and respect vs "good" men who belittled and underestimated the female protagonist and had to learn to see her true capabilities.

these were both important books to me growing up but the direct comparison astonished me.