Library Update (24)

I've bought a new story collection from Robert W. Chambers (new on the Polish market of course).  Cannot wait for the time to read it, but it is going on the List of Shame for now. Maybe next year?

Also, my wonderful wife painted this bookmark for me. The original painting was so tragic I could not stand it. So I ask my wife to repaint it. This is the finished product.  It will be a good bookmark for thick tomes of Lovecraft letters.

My prepping for Last Thing Last is coming along nicely, but that will be in another post.

Library Update (20)

I'm somewhat late with this post, but it was stranded in draft hell for some time. So fashionably late, here it is!

I've received three interesting specimens for this Easter. Don't know when I will read them, but I will put them on my "List of Shame". Hope that someday I will read them at last.

First are Lovecraft letters. I've got a rule for some time now that I read one of those times a year. Now I'm reading letters to and from Clark Ashton Smith. Maybe this book will be next year's choice?

Shadows over Innsmouth are the second book in the series, starting with Madness of Cthulhu. I never started reading the first one, so this is going to my bookshelf. The same as my next book.

Harry Angel. I have never seen the film, never read the book, but my correspondent said it is worth reading. Maybe someone can tell me if he is right. With this pace of buying books (and publishing them by various publishers) and my reading rate, I must say I'm buying book for my retirement now...

Marginalia (1)

Well... I knew for many years now that H.P.Lovecraft likes his Waterman pens. I only use pens in primary school almost thirty years ago. But a gift from three years ago from one of my friends rejuvenated my interest in that form of writing. So... My wife takes a note and when she does that the results are surprising. Lately, I've received a parcel with a Waterman pen... Try it and was surprised how good and pleasant writing is with that pen. Now I know why Lovecraft wrote these words...

“You’ll recall that I obtained a pen a piece for SH (Sonia) & myself last October at a price of $1.28 … we found the sale still on [&] the salesman still willing to make exchanges. …to obtain real satisfaction one must invest in a real Waterman … I did not escape from the emporium till a $6.25 Waterman reposed in my pocket — a modern self-filler corresponding to the ancient $6.00 type which I bought in 1906 & lost seventeen years later amidst the sands of Marblehead Neck in the summer of 1923 … the feed is certainly a relief after sundry makeshifts — tho’ I think I’ll change this especial model tomorrow for one with a slightly coarser point — one less likely to scratch on rough paper. It is certainly good to be back among the Watermans again …” — Lovecraft to Lillian Clark on 30th January 1926.

[The “sundry makeshifts” apparently included a self-filling Conklin, loaned from Moe after Lovecraft’s pen was lost “amid the sands of Marblehead”].