Old Book Monday - June 18



Quite a few book bloggers participate in a weekly meme in which they share delicious and mouth-watering pictures of the new books they have recently received. I love strolling through the blogosphere and checking out these pictures. I don’t buy a lot of new books but realized I could still participate by sharing pictures of what I do buy a lot of—OLD books. Hence, “Old Book Mondays”


 
This week’s “Old Book Monday” features one of my strangest acquisitions to date: "Weird Tit-Bits - English."

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This book isn't a very recent acquisition, I found this book at a used bookseller at Readercon last year (2011), but I wanted to share it with you because it's so unusual. What first attracted my attention his book is the adorably pocket sized nature of this book, along with the odd title (in modern usuage it's "tid-bits, not tit-bits." However, when I thumbed through the book, two additional things caught my attention: there was no publication date, and there were stories (that I had never heard of) from Dickens and Defoe. Since it was only $10, off it came home with me.

WeirdTitBits 01

 A little internet research to the rescue (okay, so it's true; trying to solve the mystery that accompanies some of these books is more than half the fun!): originally called "Weird Tales" and published in 1888 in London by William Patternson, there were four language versions of the book--English, Irish, American, and German. Each version was reprinted as the American publisher White and Allen (which is the version I have) as Weird Tit-Bits in 1895.

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Each of the stories in this book is indeed weird or, more accurately, horrifying. They instantly brought to mind something I might find in one of the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" anthologies! the first story, "The Pythagorean" by A. Stewart Harrison was gruesome and horrible and totally awesome. Dickens's "The Old Man's Tale About the Queery Client" and Defoe's "In Defense of His Right" also don't disappoint. There are also several uncredited stories, which is odd. Anyone know who wrote "Sixteen Days of Death" or "The Poisoned Mind"?

 
What about you? Have any recent book acquisitions you want to share?

For even more book love, visit some of the sites participating in any  of the following "weekly book haul" memes:
-Stacking the Shelves - hosted by Tynga's Reviews
-Unpack This - hosted by Mostly Reveiws

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Comments  

# T.Bruce 2012-06-19 01:30
This one was interesting just because I had never heard of the short stories in this book, even though I'm a fan of Dicken's, Defoe, etc. So it was super cool to find this - and I just loving saying "Tit-Bits" - I haven't been able to dig up if that is a typo/mistake, or if originally the word was "tit bit" and over time changed to "tid bit."
# Beth DiIorio 2012-06-18 23:09
This is a very cool find...good eye! Its very interesting to look back in history and read about the viewpoints and topics of interest for readers at that time.
Beth :-)