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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

What WW1 books are you reading?


andigger

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50 minutes ago, Dust Jacket Collector said:

Mind you at £20 it represents better value than the genuine 1st on the same platform at an eye-watering £1250.
Don’t think I’d switch jackets between copies. Most of the books I’m after are so scarce that the chances of finding more than one are fairly distant. I think it’s more of a concern for wealthy collectors of modern firsts. I suppose If you’re spending tens of thousands on a book it needs to be right.

Oh yes indeed , great value if it goes for £20 . 'Subaltern on the Somme 'was one of the first books i bought in it's jacket ( 1st ed ) , i saw it at a flea market 

and casually asked the vendor how much he wanted for it and couldn't get my money out quick enough when he said " a fiver " ( the £1250 one is of course

being sold by the dealer who has eye watering prices ) . I noticed recently on e-bay a dealer got negative feedback because a buyer had noticed the jacket 

of their 1st edition book was from a later edition so i suppose it pays to check them ( both for buyer and seller ! ) . 

 

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2 hours ago, Dust Jacket Collector said:

Mind you at £20 it represents better value than the genuine 1st on the same platform at an eye-watering £1250.
Don’t think I’d switch jackets between copies. Most of the books I’m after are so scarce that the chances of finding more than one are fairly distant. I think it’s more of a concern for wealthy collectors of modern firsts. I suppose If you’re spending tens of thousands on a book it needs to be right.

i would suggest a bid of 700.00 might well secure this item ?

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2 hours ago, barkalotloudly said:

i would suggest a bid of 700.00 might well secure this item ?

I was thinking more along the lines of moving the decimal point back a place.

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40 minutes ago, Dust Jacket Collector said:

I was thinking more along the lines of moving the decimal point back a place.

As there are only a handful of collecting this sort of thing and i would suspect most of us will have a jacketed copy already  (so it's a 

dealers lot ) i was going to suggest about half of that . Although having said that another jacketed copy ( 1928 ed ) was up for a buy 

now of about £125 a couple of weeks ago and now seems to have gone, so i could well be wrong ( i usually am :wacko: ) As i said before

it's a bit like buses , this copy makes the 4th jacketed one I've seen for sale in the last couple of months .

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2 hours ago, Black Maria said:

As there are only a handful of collecting this sort of thing

 

      Hmmm-  So a well motivated serial killer could destroy an entire collecting genre?

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Hmmm-  So a well motivated serial killer could destroy an entire collecting genre?

I’m pretty sure there are quite a number of wealthy but more secretive collectors out there. Not everyone’s as friendly as us lot.

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Hmmm-  So a well motivated serial killer could destroy an entire collecting genre?

:w00t:

 

On 11/03/2021 at 15:29, Dust Jacket Collector said:

I’m pretty sure there are quite a number of wealthy but more secretive collectors out there. Not everyone’s as friendly as us lot.

Agreed , they belong to the three wise monkeys club :ph34r: 

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8 minutes ago, Dust Jacket Collector said:

more secretive collectors

     The ones whose libraries are next to the fortified deep-level bunkers in Brazil  where they keep their galleries of stolen art?

image.png.1285af50d75e90c5aace141432620d97.png

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  • 2 weeks later...

Gosh, Long Covid must addle the brain somewhat.  J.C.Dunn-TWTIK.   4 copies kicking around- One at a provincial auction that I did not bother to mark the result.  One from a kingly bookseller on the South Coast at £1500.  One on Ebygum that failed to sell at £600 and has been relisted in the slightly bizarre ways of that bookseller at £900.  And, of course, top of the tree- a Harrington offering at a mere £2,250  (but you do get free postage-fairs fair). Well,it shows that the officers mess of RWF were not book connoisseurs,if nothing else. For that sort of money for a book in that condition, I would at least expect the tractor which had been used to pull it over several ploughed fields to have been chucked in as part of the deal.

 

image.png.e2ffc031c2bdce521dec928a29a92278.png

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Pity they didn’t hang on to the jacket it originally came in! Maybe still out in the field somewhere?

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For a book that was supposedly printed in such small numbers it's surprising how many copies regularly appear for sale , usually at silly prices ! I must 

have seen at least 15 copies since i began collecting as opposed to that other classic 'Devil in the Drum' , of which I've only seen 3 copies for sale . To 

be honest although everyone seems to rave about TWTIK i didn't find it particularly memorable when i read it and would have been quite happy with 

my 1987 good quality hardback copy if i hadn't have been fortunate to find a relatively cheap original copy recently .

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  I would agree that it is slightly too common to be classed as rare.   And, yes, I have never been that enthusiastic about it, as it is,after all, a post-war construct- in effect, Dunn's version of "I was There" pulling together the accounts of others to end up with something that smacks of the book equivalent of Journey's End.  Let's see how many more copies turn up this year!

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 27/02/2021 at 22:18, 593jones said:

Reading 'The Lost Legions of Fromelles' by Peter Barton.  Excellent book, 

 

that one is still missing on my stack of "to read". 

For now, just freshly done with me research paper, I actually haven't read anything WWI related for the last five month (apart from a try at "the Dead of Mametz", which I regretted downloading on kindl and Jacqueline's Winspear's "The care and management of lies", which in turn I highly recommend) 

Easing my way back into the saddle now I've decided to re-read "Birdsong" and then I will first re-read Keegan and Little-Hart's seminal histories of the war before diving back into my research again... 

 

M. 

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Good luck with 'Birdsong' - once was enough for me. :)

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"Jacqueline's Winspear's "The care and management of lies", which in turn I highly recommend) "

 

I'm sure that you're aware (but others might not know) that this is one of a series of mysteries featuring a female private detective, Masie Dobbs. They're not all connected with the First World War, but there are echoes of what happened to her during the war in all of them.  I've read them all, and I think that they're good. 

Edited by The Scorer
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Birdsong. Once described to me as Birdshite. And it truly is, as are virtually all the novels about the Great War published since 1945. 

Regards

David

Edited by David Filsell
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2 hours ago, David Filsell said:

Birdsong. Once described to me as Birdshite. And it truly is, as are virtually all the novels about the Great War published since 1945. 

Regards

David

 

I was tempted to suggest a list of ‘worst’ WW1 fiction or at least, best avoided’ but you seem to have it covered 😂

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3 hours ago, David Filsell said:

Birdsong. Once described to me as Birdshite. And it truly is, as are virtually all the novels about the Great War published since 1945. 

Regards

David

 

I hope you're not including 'Covenant With Death' in that category!

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Likewise 'In Parenthesis'!  🙂 - oh, hang on, not a novel - scrub round that...

Edited by seaJane
Oops
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3 hours ago, seaJane said:

Likewise 'In Parenthesis'!  🙂 - oh, hang on, not a novel - scrub round that...

and published in 1937 as well!

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3 minutes ago, Dust Jacket Collector said:

and published in 1937 as well!

Could have sworn it was later! Must have been thinking of something else....

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1 minute ago, seaJane said:

Could have sworn it was later! Must have been thinking of something else....

The Anathemata perhaps?

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37 minutes ago, Dust Jacket Collector said:

The Anathemata perhaps?

Quite probably :).

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On 22/04/2021 at 14:27, The Scorer said:

"Jacqueline's Winspear's "The care and management of lies", which in turn I highly recommend) "

 

I'm sure that you're aware (but others might not know) that this is one of a series of mysteries featuring a female private detective, Masie Dobbs. They're not all connected with the First World War, but there are echoes of what happened to her during the war in all of them.  I've read them all, and I think that they're good. 

Got them all too, except the very latest ... 

 

Love them!!! 

 

M.

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