Brain Leno has a story about when he was a kid in Bismarck, beginning to buy paperbacks. He’d sit in front of the small bookcase he shelved them on and savor his library. His father made the bookstand “out of an old gutted TV.” Maybe he had 100 books.
Kid Leno would wonder, “Does anyone else have as many books as I do???”
Brian just found a snapshot of that proto-collection.
“I think it’s very cool. Never thought I’d see an old picture of the beginning of my library. Imagine that little bookstand. . . and realize today I’m closing in on probably 11,000 or 12,000 books.”
Those are books proper — I bet Brian is not counting or trying to count the myriad fanzines, journals, magazines and comics he must have. As a famed Autograph Hound I’m sure he’s tabulating up his signed or inscribed books, but he has much more loose autograph material — signed photos, signed cards, signed letters. My guess would be his autograph trove must total in the tens of thousands of items, but that estimation might be colored by his deservedly fearsome reputation for landing John Hancocks.
The snap is old and dim — “just too much glare and fading.”
But Brian sat down to it. “I’ve really studied that picture. My cat is taking center stage but with a magnifying glass I can make out what I had. Some titles on the spines can’t be read, but I spent many, many hours looking at that bookcase — and I still have most of the books to compare against.
“Top shelf from the left, the Lancer Conan series — up to the 11th volume, I believe. Then the Lancer Wolfshead, then The Dark Man, Bran Mak Morn, Almuric and King Kull. Next the three Solomon Kane Centaur paperbacks.
“After that the first 8 volumes of the Gor series. Then 3 books or so that I can’t make out, but then David Mason’s Kavin’s World, Return of Kavin and The Sorcerer’s Skull. Then 4 Avon A. Merritt books with the covers by Douglas Rosa, seemed like a uniform set.
“Second shelf is very difficult. By my cat’s right ear is The Catcher in the Rye and a couple down from that is Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie and later I can make out Great American Short Stories. At the very end I can see Alistair MacLean’s Puppet on a Chain and The Satan Bug. Last is Harold Lamb’s The Mighty Manslayer.
“The bottom shelf is easy. Bradbury’s Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451 and I Sing the Body Electric. On the Lovecraft side Fungi from Yuggoth, The Survivor and Others, The Doom that Came to Sarnoth and The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.
“Since I have classics like Salinger and Dreiser mixed in with fantasy that’s probably all I owned then. Maybe 75 books, counting those that can’t be seen in the picture.
“We were far from rich, poor really, but my father would give me maybe 5 bucks a month, if he could spare it, and I’d walk to the local bookstore and stretch that fiver for all I could get. Paperbacks were cheap then, 40 cents for Ace, others 60 or 75 cents. I could buy a few. Come home, read ’em and stack them in the stand.
“I’m really glad I found the picture and will keep it with my library just to constantly remind me how the collection has grown.
“Good days, Don, good days.”
