Loot of the Week 16 April 2015

--- "But what's this long face about, Mr. Starbuck; wilt thou not chase the white whale! art not game for Moby Dick?"

Suffering from insomnia, or rather, the consequence of untimely napping after dinner, I thought I'll post up the loot of the week. Here, we have four very fine full leather-bound books from the Franklin Press and Oxford University Press collaboration. And then there are the first editions from Don Delillo, Saul Bellow, and Robert Frost. I have decent collections of their major first editions, in addition to those of Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, and Alice Munro, all of which I hope to publish on this blog some time in the future.

Franklin press, which is now defunct, published some classic titles in different construct (full leather vs quarter leather) and/or design under different series (Franklin-Oxford, World Greatest Book, Limited Edition etc). Add to that a competitor, Easton press, who does similar publications and is still operating today, and we have interesting debates over Franklin-Franklin and Franklin-Easton preference or superiority. I prefer the Franklin-Oxford series over the other Franklins, except when they are the true first editions of books I want to collect, and over the Eastons as well. Maybe I should write something  about these books some day.

Oh, and I've recently acquired very good to fine first editions of Cormac McCarthy's Suttree and Blood Meridian, both without the dreaded but commonly seen remainder marks, as well as a Good to Very Good first edition of Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire at a couple of book auctions this week. Can't wait for their arrivals!

Oh, and did oil price just went up by 5% in one day? The Fed may soon be caught between a rock and a hard place if oil price, and consequently inflation, start their recovery/ascent. Normalized inflation with sluggish growth in a still zero interest rate environment sound like a real blood meridian.

Oh, and writing a blog is hard work.