It’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, and today’s very frustrating theme is the Top Ten Books you’d save if (insert calamity here). I say frustrating because I do love all my books, and since I’m not the kind of book collector who spends loads of money on first edition The Catcher In the Ryes and Moby Dicks, I don’t have ten obvious choices. So my list this week is mostly based on feelings of nostalgia, and leans heavily on the side of horror, which is really my first love, and the very first kind of books I started buying when I was able to afford them. So here they are, pretty much in the order I acquired them:
1. The Stand by Stephen King (Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1978). As I’ve mentioned before in my other Stephen King-centric post, The Stand was my very first hardcover purchase. I bought it when I was sixteen from my small home town’s one and only book store (I think it was actually called The Book Store!) for $12.95, a brand new hardcover. Today it’s worth a few hundred dollars, but for me the price is irrelevant. It’s still the best thing I own.
2. Swan Song by Robert McCammon (Dark Harvest, 1989). Dark Harvest published beautiful editions of horror novels back in the 80s, and it was during that time that I began voraciously stocking up on every Dark Harvest title I could find. Swan Song is one of those books, and mine just happens to be signed by the wonderful Robert McCammon, whom I’ve met several times. It is a grand, terrifying and magical tale of good versus evil, and it is still one of my favorite McCammons to this day.
3. Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons (Dark Harvest, 1989). Another beautiful example of my Dark Harvest collection, Carrion Comfort is another stellar horror story by another master of the genre. These Dark Harvest books are over-sized and have beautiful dust jackets (Swan Song is illustrated by Charles Lang, and Carrion Comfort is illustrated by Kathleen McNeil Sherman and Dan Simmons.) These tiny thumbnail photos just don’t do them justice. Carrion Comfort is also signed by the author, and I am proud to be the owner of this beautiful edition.
4. – 10. The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King (Donald M. Grant Publishers, 1982-2004). I won’t repeat myself too much, since I’ve done a whole post on these books, but the truth is, they are an important part of my library and they would definitely be part of my Top Ten rescued books. I feel lucky that I was able to purchase all these books for the original list price when they were released, and not pay inflated collectors prices.
OK, I guess that wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. As long as I don’t keep thinking about the rest of my library and everything I’ve left off this list…
Whoa, I’d love to have an original hardcover copy of The Stand! I don’t even have my own “original” paperback–lent it to a friend in high school (several years ago) and never got it back. I just bought a new one recently. It’s SO GOOD. My top ten included the collector’s version of It, though 🙂 perhaps not worth quite as much as an original hardcover of The Stand, but it’s very pretty! 🙂