Sorry, I haven't felt much like posting in the past 2 weeks. I think I'm still reeling from the whole idea of "a lawsuit".

Neil Gaiman came by this afternoon and signed books for an hour and a half. Lots of copies of Crazy Hair and Blueberry Girl and loads of other books. If you try to order from the neilgaiman.net site and find it closed, email me directly (greg@dreamhavenbooks.com) and we'll sort out your requests. If you have an order already placed, please give me some time to wrap and ship it. It will take a good week+.

Thanks.

Greg

New Comics are in and on the shelf. Yet another comparatively small week but one standout book is The Art of Harvey Kurtzman. Kurtzman was the genius behind Mad Comics and much of the whole EC Comics line of horror and war comics as well.

Also, Unwritten #2 came in from Vertigo. I just read #1 last night and it has the potential to be a really great read. It's written by Michael Carey and drawn by Minneapolis artist Peter Gross. You should check it out - the first issue was only $1.00 as an incentive and it worked. I sold lots of copies and apparently it's going into a second printing.

Now for the blues part...

I just got word that the people who bought our old building will likely try to sue us. It's been brewing for about 6 weeks and since we hadn't heard back from them in the past 4 weeks or so, we thought they'd given up after our attorney had pointed out that they had no legal basis to sue. They still haven't as far as we can see, but that probably won't stop them. They have an attorney on their board of directors (they're a non-profit) so I think they can essentially sue us for very little cost since he'll do it pro bono. But it will cost me $175 times however many hours my attorney has to spend on it. Then there's the time I'll have to spend preparing as well. I'm just not sure how they think they can sue us for repair/remodeling work that wasn't dealt with in their due diligence phase of the process before they bought the building. It's been over 7 months since we closed and 18 months since we started this whole deal.

Lisa was here when I got the news about an hour ago. She was so distraught, she left in tears. Me, I'm just angry. It cost me $500 just to respond to their frivolous demands when they first made them. Now, who knows how much more it will cost.

Greg

I was closed today. I opened up Sunday for what I thought would be a slow day with an early closing but I ended up at the store until 5:00pm and doing quite a lot of business. Today, I worked around the store while EV came by to put the new catalog together. It went to the printer and I should have it mailed early Wednesday.

Last night I watched the rest of a film I'd started early in the week. The Fall, directed by someone named Tarsem, who must be an artist (I haven't done any research yet) because it was the most amazingly beautiful film you could imagine. A bit of Wizard of Oz meets the Princess Bride filmed in about 25 countries (no exaggeration there) in the most incredible locales on the planet. Maggie Thompson of the Comics Buyers Guide had recommended it to me saying she'd watched it probably 7 times in the past few weeks. I can see why. It was lush and inviting and the story, while simple, was intriguing. It starred Lee Pace from Pushing Daisies (a fabulous TV show). I would recommend this to anyone who can sit for 2 hours and absorb beautiful scenery.

I started reading China Mieville's new novel, The City and the City. It's a mystery set in a bizarre world, much as his earlier books have been. I'm only two chapters in but I'm sure I'll enjoy it. I'm also half-way through Hubert's Freaks, the story of the discovery by a Philadelphia bookseller of a previously unknown set of photographs by Diane Arbus taken in Hubert's Dime Museum using a number of the sideshow folk there. I'm a sucker for anything to do with sideshows and I have quite a large collection of rare paper material about them. I only ever went to a couple of them when I was little; my parents really disapproved. But I did buy a pitch card from the man with the largest feet in the world. He was so deformed he couldn't stand. Still have that card.

Time to go.

Greg

We're in the middle of the garage sale today even though it's the first rainy day we've had in quite some time. I'm just glad that we're getting some rain. Things were explosively dry.

I set everything up in the garage for the garage sale (how novel) and things are moving along. If it had been nice outside, I would have been able to put out far more stuff for folks to look through. I'll have lots of cheap stuff* out today until 7:00pm, tomorrow from 12-5 and NEXT WEEKEND!

Next weekend is the neighborhood garage sale (Saturday June 13; we've registered to be part of that one as well so I'll open up the vaults once again. And if it's nice next week, I'll bring out even more.

Come buy with me.

Greg

* Hardcover books are $1 or 6/$5; paperbacks are 50¢ ea. or 3/$1; comics are 25¢ ea. or 5/$1. And there are t-shirts, CDs and a few toys and miscellaneous items.

Comics are out and on the shelves. Small week for regular comics but a big sale week for Marvel hardcover and some paperback graphic novels/collections. Many titles are 50% OFF or more. I have the Stephen King's Dark Tower series The Gunslinger Reborn adapted by Peter David, Robin Furth and Jae Lee for only $5.00, regularly $25.

I'm also dragging things up from the basement for my garage sale this weekend (Saturday June 6 / 12-7; Sunday June 7 /12-5). Thousands of hardcover and paperback books at $1.00 or less, many more thousands of comics at 25¢ each, some t-shirts, toys and whatevers at blow-out prices. Please come and buy it all so I don't have to drag it back into the bowels once again.

And next weekend (June 13 and 14) is the neighborhood garage sale which I'm also participating in. Again, I'll drag out more stuff from the depths and put it on sale. And not even the same stuff. I have enough extra books and comics to run garage sales until we're all sick of it. Plus I think I'll have some items from home, regular garage sale type stuff, since we can't have sales at home due to parking restrictions.

Aloha.

Greg

New Comics came in today and are up on the shelves. Items of particular interest (to me anyway) is the collection of John Stanley's Melvin the Monster (really great subversive stuff. Sillier than the Addams Family but along those lines) and God of Comics : Osamu Tezuka / and the Creation of Post-World War II Manga. Both wonderful books.

I finished Charlie Huston's The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death and really enjoyed his smart-ass dialogue. I like "caper" stories like this and started another one, albeit a fantasy one. Monster by A. Lee Martinez. A "cryptobiological containment worker", Monster, runs around capturing magical creatures which are only weakly perceived by humans. One human, Judy, seems to be at the center of some new-found crypto phenomena but she remembers very little of each occurrence since she doesn't have the necessary abilities to remember. Magic helps. Martinez has written a number of very good, very funny earlier books. So far, this one feels a bit more forced than the earlier ones but I'll see it through til the end.

Greg

Back already from WisCon. We got home last night and I'm busily unpacking and cleaning up my mess. It looks like things went well in my absence and things went very well at WisCon. I was a busy boy. Lisa helped out as much as she could and some friends, Allen and Brenda, also were on hand to help some of the time.

And no Norovirus this year.

I saw a lot of old friends and met many new people. I can't stay up as late as I used to but I did my best.

Comics will be in on Thursday this week due to the Memorial Day holiday. For those who forget or just want to come in on a quiet day, I will have some in store comics specials.

Remember the garage sale on June 6 and 7. I'll be offering many cheap books and comics and other specials as well.

Be well.

Greg

Howdy from Madison Wisconsin.

I'm at WisCon. I just finished getting dinner with some friends after working in the dealer's room for about 10 hours. I probably won't be partying too late tonight.

This is the first WisCon I've done on my own in many years. I ordered the books, packed the books, unpacked the books and now I'm selling the books. It's a lot of work. I've got several friends helping out. I think with the "new economy" things will be a bit slower this year than at other recent WisCons but so far it's going pretty well.

Steve watched the store on Thursday, Bob today, and EV and Wendy will be at the store tomorrow. I'll be back in the store on Tuesday.

Be well.

Greg

Well, it's not a book I plan on ordering for the store, but the catalog listing did make me laugh.

Hit Me With Your Pet Shark : Misheard Lyrics of the '80s by Charles Grosvenor Jr. (Sasquatch Books Dec. 2009) is a great title mangling of the Pat Benetar song. I keep cracking up thinking about it.

Or how about Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" lyric "Don't touch me please, I cannot stand the taste of cheese"? Again, guffaws all round. But other than the Clash's "Rock the Catbox" (not nearly so funny) there are no other great lines to sell the book.

I guess they wanted to save the suspense for those who buy the book.

To quote Mel Brooks "Work, work work, work work" or better, to quote Maynard G. Krebs "Work?" Gotta go.

Greg

Comics are in and on the shelves.

The catalog also seems to have hit everywhere yesterday and today. So if I'm slow answering the phone, you'll know why. The mail order phone has been ringing off the hook and I'm trying to keep up with orders and in-store customers. Your patience is appreciated.

Thanks.

Greg

Not a whole lot going on. The weekend was a normal one; sporadic business with occasional bouts of frenzy. "Trying to catch up" will probably be carved into my tombstone.

I bought a new lawnmower yesterday. The old one died late last year after nearly 20 years of brutal service clearing the 1/2 acre of what I laughingly call a lawn. This one is an electric model, with or without cord. I doubt it will last nearly as long but we'll see. I charged it overnight and cut the lawn this morning. It worked ok considering what was left over after last year - it hadn't been cut for about the last month of the season. Lisa had managed to rake up many of the leaves but it was still a bit of a chore mulching up all that grass and whatever.

I finished Jonathan Carroll's Ghost in Love and was less than thrilled. Not one of his more stellar efforts. I also just read A Century of Stop Motion Animation by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton. This is a great book if you are interested in the minutia of who did what on which movie. I wanted to be an animator, went to college and made films and all that, but I just didn't make it. I think the basic artistic talent was missing. That and I opened a bookstore in my sophomore year.....

Based on Charlie Brown's recommendation in Locus I started Charlie Huston's The Mystic Art of Erasing All Signs of Death. I'm only about 60 pages in and it's already a great read. I think I'm going to like it a lot. Something like Christopher Moore (only not so manic or side-splittingly funny) crossed with Bill Fitzhugh.

William and I went to the X-Men/Wolverine movie yesterday. It's a good thing I'm not a Marvel Zombie since the various changes, mistakes, time-shifts, etc would drive me crazy. (It was funny - William, who doesn't read much in the way of comics) was telling me all sorts of things about the characters and situations. I had no idea he knew anything about the Marvel Universe.) According to this movie, Dr. Xavier started the X-Men about 1975. A little late. But overall it was enjoyable.

All for now. Cheers.

Greg

Another week has flown by. I was in Chicago from Thursday to Sunday at the Windy City Pulp and Paper show. It's always fun to see such amazing books, sell a bunch of good books, and talk to people who really like books. Notice a theme here? Everything was books and I had a good time.

New comics are here and on the shelves. Not a large number of titles this week. Just a lot of "stuff". I'm bursting at the seems with "stuff" right now. I'll list a few new items tomorrow when I've got more of today's "stuff" under control.

Cory Doctorow stopped by today. Interesting guy. He's got more things going on at one time than just about any I know. I highly recommend Little Brother which is up for a Hugo. It should be required reading for anyone considering any sort of curtailing of basic rights in the name of security.

Greg

The New Comics are in and on the shelves. Lots of very minor titles this week and not much of note.

I do have a great Marvel hardcover sale: A bunch of classic archive books, normally $50 each, are now 1/2 price. There are some great oldies here; Hulk, Daredevil in his yellow costume, X-Men, Spiderman. Also some premium hardcover collections regularly $20-$25 are now $10.

More Spring cleaning to come.

Cheers.

Greg

I'm in the middle of getting reading to attend tomorrow's Microcon, the comic convention at the State Fair grounds. Come on out and see what wonders I've dug out of the depths.

And speaking of the depths, I'd like to announce a GARAGE SALE.

Books & Comics Garage Sale
Saturday June 6 Noon-7
Sunday June 8 Noon-5

We’ll be offering tens of thousands of items from THE BASEMENT!

Books! Comics! Stuff I Don’t Even Recognize!

Lots for 25¢ on up. If it’s nice, I’ll fire up the grill.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I have to start thinking ahead to Summer. And then Fall. And then Christmas.

Man the year's almost over.

Greg

Sorry, I forgot to post that new comics arrived on time Wednesday and were up and on the shelves by opening. I never think to thank my wife, Lisa, for coming in Wednesday mornings to help me. Or Wendy Hyers/Comeau who stops by many days just to help us count out the new books and do the pulls. All very much appreciated by me.

Alas, the catalog will be late again. I'm working on it now but I'm not going to put it out until just after the Windy City Pulp and Paper show May 1,2,3. Since I won't be at home those days, it won't do much good putting out the catalog anyway. Steve will have the shop open but he's limited in what he can do for mail order. But hopefully, that will put me back on track with catalogs and I hope to have them out within the first week or so of each month. There are so many books and comics coming in lately, it's just nuts. I'm seeing a few publishers slowing their schedules or eliminating books and that's a good thing. But on the other hand, more people are offering me "stuff" than ever before, many just to pay the bills. I turn away 90%+ of what's offered and there's still more than I can handle.

New Book Mention: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains". And so begins the timeless story of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy and the fight against the "unmentionables". I started reading it last night. While I'm not a fan of Jane Austen, this has its moments. It's been quite a smash. Time Magazine mentions the author is tackling Abraham Lincoln and vampires next. And, if they were serious, Hellen Keller, Werewolf Hunter after that. Oh boy.

Greg

Last night I read that J.G. Ballard passed away. I'd known he was ill but it still is somewhat shocking and saddening. I was a great fan of his work and I did get to meet him a few times and even spend a bit of time with him.

Years ago I was in London and met up with some friends in a pub. A bookseller/publisher Richard Lewis was there and Michael Moorcock, John Sladek and Iain Banks also showed up. I remember talking with John, whom I hadn't seen in a while and Moorcock chiding us "Minnesota boys" coming all the way to the UK to visit each other. We then headed over to a special release party for whatever new Ballard book there was to crash the party since apparently none present had been invited. I wouldn't have done it on my own but in such company.....

I received the hairy eyeball from a senior editor whom I knew, but nothing more. We ate, drank and visited with Ballard in a small, intimate setting and it was a great time.

Another time, just after Alice and I had opened The Stars Our Destination in Chicago, there was an event just a few blocks from us at Barbara's Books for Ballard and his new book Empire of the Sun. We had promoted the signing a great deal ourselves because we weren't yet in business when the tour was set so we never had the opportunity to host it. Barbara's kindly let us get some books signed for customers but somehow I missed one. Ballard was doing another event the next day at the Water Tower B. Dalton's so I took the train down to stand on line to get the stray book signed. I got there expecting a huge line as there had been at Barbara's but I was shocked to see Ballard seated at a table all by himself and no one paying him the least bit of attention. I sat and chatted with him for about 45 minutes and I can't recall that anyone else came during that time. Sad for him but great for me.

Now he's gone. Many of my old favorites are gone now - R.A. Lafferty, John Sladek, Keith Roberts, Philip K. Dick, Thomas Disch. I'm feeling old today.

I'll run some reviews/recommendations tomorrow. Today cataloguing!

Greg

I'm taking most of a day off, something I haven't had in months. I was going to go see The Watchmen, but it's disappeared from just about everywhere. Too bad. I'll have to wait until it gets to some of the second run theaters now. I just finished re-reading The Watchmen graphic novel and was surprised how little I remembered of the ending. And how much I really don't like it. I may like the movie more since I've heard (more than once) how they've changed the ending.

Greg

Alice Bentley read my mind. She knows bookselling too. She suggested that I mention or do a quick review of a book or two each day as part of my blog/post. It has been my intention all along to do something of the sort, but we all know what the road to Hell is paved with.

So here goes:

Ray Harryhausen : Master of the Majicks by Mike Hankin

This is an incredible book if you're into stop-motion animation filmmaking. Harryhausen, after seeing Willis O'Brien's King Kong devoted his life to creating animated films. This is a loving tribute to his work.

It say "Volume 2 : The American Films" on the cover but this is the first volume published. Volume 1 is still forthcoming. It's packed with rare photos, great anecdotes and appendices and ephemera. Highly recommended.
Archive Editions 2008/9 $75.00

The three earlier books by Harryhausen and Tony Dalton (Ray Harryhausen : An Animated Life / The Art of Ray Harryhausen / A Century of Stop Motion Animation) are all also available at $50.00 each. These books make up the bible for fans of stop-motion animation.

It's too gorgeous to be inside.

Greg

Keep repeating "I must remember to post. I must remember to post." Maybe that will work.

Back from LA. Back from Cleveland. Back from MiniCon. Home for a little while.

Comics came in today. A very small week. That makes two very small weeks in a row. But I still have so much other stuff that the seems are bursting. So come on down, say "hi" and buy something. Get my economy stimulated.

Greg

Howdy,

I'm in Cleveland (or at least nearby Strongsville) for a B-Movie convention, Cinema Wasteland. Here I'm know as "the book guy" or "the old bookseller" since there are only a very few books around here. Mostly DVDs of gore/horror films and black t-shirts. This crowd is mostly 10-20-30 years younger than me, big beer-drinkers, and black clad. Many piercings and tattoos too. The favorite movies are Friday the 13th, Halloween, and anything with lots of blood and breasts. An interesting group and actually one of the nicest crowds I've ever dealt with. I come here twice a year and sell mostly older classic horror film material (Universal and Hammer) but I do carry books and toys based on more recent films too. I don't get rich but it's a living.

I'll be back in the store on Tuesday.

Then MiniCon next weekend.

Be well.

Greg