Half-Price Books had another coupon sale this week, and I picked up a few things that I feel like documenting here.
I picked up a lot of “popular culture”…stuff, I’d say, though other people might call it “crap”. Specifically, I got:
- Volumes four, five and eight of Mannix, which puts me halfway towards having a complete run. We watched “A Ticket to the Eclipse” Saturday night, and Darren McGavin is quite creepy in it, even if he can’t decide what his accent should be. And speaking of Darren…
- Finally found a copy of Kolchak: The Night Stalker the series for 50% off with coupon. We’re still watching the midnight showings on MeTV (Hi, Pat!) but this will let me catch up: for example, I’ve managed to miss “They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be…” in the last two cycles. Now all I need is the two TV movies, though I plan to wait for the rumored 4K Blu-Ray remasters that are supposedly coming from Kino Lorber.
- Mister Roberts. I have actually never seen this, but I have been known to use the “I just threw your stinking palm tree overboard” line on managers.
- Hellfighters. John Wayne! Jim Hutton! On Blu-Ray, for $5 with the 50$ off coupon.
- Tony Rome. Found cheap plus coupon, and I actually added this to the list a few weeks ago. Frank Sinatra PI film: the late Deanna Lund supposedly plays a “redheaded lesbian stripper”, though she’s not credited anywhere on the jacket copy.
Of course, I wouldn’t be me if I hadn’t picked up some gun books, too…
- Shooting to Live by Fairbairn and Sykes. Just a Paladin Press reprint that was cheap with coupon, but on the KR Training book list, and I didn’t have one.
- John Shaw (and Michael Bane)’s You Can’t Miss. Also cheap with coupon, also another KR Training essential book.
- Roy Jinks History of Smith and Wesson and The Recollections of William Finaughty: Elephant Hunter 1864-1875 (Capstick Library). Giving these short shrift because they’re duplicates of books already in my library, that I got cheap with coupons and plan to flip.
- Small Arms Design and Ballistics by Colonel Townsend Whelen. Yes, more leatherbound books from the Firearms Classics Library: with the 50% off coupon, I got both volumes together for $25.
- The Best of Jack O’Connor. Slipcased
limited edition of 1,000 copiesfrom Amwell Press(with no limitation or signature page). Doesn’t seem to duplicate any of O’Connor’s other essays in my collection, and it was $12.50+tax after the 50% off coupon. (Edited to add 7/17: looking more closely at this, it’s actually a trade version of the limited edition. Still a very nice copy at a good price.) - The Greatest Hammerless Repeating Shotgun Ever Built: The Model 12, 1912-1964 by Dave Riffle. This is a book I wasn’t aware of, but stumbled across accidentally on the “Nostalgia” shelves at the Southpark Meadows HPB. I’m delighted I did. I’ve only had a chance to flip through this, and haven’t read it cover to cover. But this looks like an attempt to do for the Winchester Model 12 what Roger Rule did for the pre-64 Model 70 in The Rifleman’s Rifle: document the production history, the variants, known special guns, packaging, advertising…I think Riffle has everything, and if he doesn’t, it isn’t for lack of trying. I look forward to reading this cover to cover. $50 at HPB, minus 40% with the coupon + tax.
(“Dwight, do you have a Model 12?” Actually…no. But it is on my want list, for two reasons: I’m a sucker for the takedown design. And Hemmingway, according to Hemingway’s Guns: The Sporting Arms of Ernest Hemingway was a huge fan of the Model 12: not only did he shoot birds with it, he also took it to Africa and put it to use pursuing wounded leopards in thick brush. I suspect if someone told him he could only have one gun for the rest of his life, he would have picked a Model 12. He’s actually known to have owned at least two, and given others to his sons: the first one he replaced after using it for 30 years because it was “worn out”.)
- Bolt Action Rifles, Expanded 3rd Edition, by Frank de Haas.
Speaking of Rule and Rifleman’s Rifle, he cites this as a reference, so I’ve been looking for a copy. All of the ones I’ve seen have been ratty first editions and were expensive for the condition: Rule cites the 2nd edition, so I was looking for that or a later one. This was still kind of ratty, but cheap enough: $12.99 – 40% with coupon. The 3rd edition is also the last one de Hass worked on: he died in 1994 after finishing the updates, but before it went to press. (There is a 4th edition listed on Amazon that came out in 2003 and is credited to de Haas and Wayne Zwoll.)
Mr. de Haas was an amateur gunsmith and gun writer. His basic premise, from what I’ve read so far in Bolt Action Rifles, is to take every major type of bolt action from the 1871 Mauser forward into the 1990s (both military and commercial) and discuss what’s good, what’s bad, how they function, how to take them apart and put them back together again, and how to do some basic gunsmithing like trigger adjustments. I read his chapters on the Model 70 yesterday and was impressed and amused: Mr. de Haas likes the pre-64 action, but is also clear about what he sees as its faults, and seemed to prefer the post-68 Model 70 action. (He also says (paraphrasing): don’t say anything bad about the pre-64 action to my son, though: he won the 1,000 yard match at Camp Perry with a gun built on one of those actions.)
I suspect I won’t be sitting down and reading this cover to cover, but it seems like an important book to add to the reference library.
Now I just need to find some space and start consolidating all the gun books in one location…