Book Shopping

~ I seem to have rekindled my love affair with books – not that books and I ever fell out of love. It’s just that since I divested myself of 90% of the hundreds of books I used to own, I have tried not to replace them with others, and up until recently I have keep my book purchases to an absolute minimum.

Since members of the extended family have opened a second hand bookshop on Semaphore Road (the Book Box), I have taken a renewed interest in printed literature, and I now keep a look out for books I think they may be interested in, or just as importantly, books I am interested in.

Most of what I try and get for myself are related to travel in some way, since that is my main interest at the moment, but that doesn’t stop me from grabbing other topics of interest.

Today, while my niece and I were out and about, we passed a small community library near Henley Beach that was selling off some old stock. Titles were going out for ridiculous prices. The most expensive books were 50c each, and the cheapest 10c. As I said to my niece, what is the point of selling books that cheaply? At 10c a book you might as well be giving them away. At least make them all 50c each.

Anyway, I bought four titles, for which the woman behind the counter wanted to charge me 50c!
I said, That’s too cheap, and gave her $2.00 instead.

I bought the screenplay to Stanley Kubrick’s last movie, Eyes Wide Shut (1999); a book called, The Man Who Saved Britain (2006) about James Bond; J.M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K (1983); and Ultimate DVD: The Essential Guide to Building Your DVD Collection (2004).

Eyes Wide Shut is particularly interesting since it reprints in full the original Arthur Schnitzler novel, Dream Story (1926) on which EWS was based.

I bought Ultimate DVD on the basis that when I randomly flipped it open, the first film I landed on was Sergio Leone’s western masterpiece, Once Upon a Time in The West. Since the author also referred to it as a masterpiece, I knew I was in good hands.

The Editor-in-Chief of the book is Peter M. Bracke, who apparently started a DVD focussed web site called, DVDFILE.COM back around the year 2000.

Unfortunately, he only chooses 100 films to include in his ultimate guide. As you might expect with any selection like this, what gets left out is just as important as what gets included. I was disappointed to see that several of my all time favourites were not selected: Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch in particular. At least he had the good taste to include another favourite, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.

His criteria seems to be DVDs that include lots of extras such as director commentaries, photo galleries, historical and documentary material, interviews, and such like. Since the book was published, a new Blade Runner box set is available, and if Bracke ever produces and updated version of the book I’d be surprised if Blade Runner didn’t get a mention.

You may no longer be able to find a copy of this book, but you can visit the DVDFILE.COM website any time you like – so why not visit now. Image: Terry Gilliam's Brazil

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