Free to a good home -- TAKEN

Interested in other cultures? Want good maps? Need pictures for school projects? Come check our free table area for National Geographic Magazines.

Now for that New Year's resolution

We've just received a number of VHS tapes including diet and exercise tapes from Jenny Craig, Callan Pinckney (Callanetics), Marilu Henner and several others.  These are located right at the front of the shop and are available for 50 cents per tape.  At such prices, you can also keep your resolution to be more thrifty!

New Year's and January hours

Please note the following hours changes:

• New Year's Eve, Friday Dec. 31, open regular hours.  However, the volunteers may consider closing early, so if you're thinking of coming over later in the afternoon you might want to call ahead.
• New Year's Day and Sunday Jan. 2, shop closed.
• The shop will also be closed the following Sundays in January:  1/16, 23, 30.

Our best wishes to you for a healthy and prosperous 2011!

Sci-fi and fantasy landslide -- SOLD AS BULK SALE

Just in today, nearly 700 recent titles of science fiction and fantasy, mostly paperbacks, nice condition, $1-$2 per book, some still in the donation cartons, others on the book cart and on/under the new fiction table.  Ask the volunteers to show you the locations and the list of titles.  Authors include Roger Zelazny, Andre Norton, Jonathan Wylie, Anne McCaffrey, David Eddings, C.J. Cherryh, Sherri Tepper, Piers Anthony, Isaac Asimov, Robert Jordan, Barbara Hambly, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Terry Brooks and many, many more.  Come in and stock up!

Fire trucks and trains, oh my!

Just in, 
The World of  LGB,
     the 1990 edition of the "Lehmann-Gross-Bahn" catalog,
195  photo pages of model railroad stuff:  locomotives, cars, tracks, little people and even circus animals to go with the circus stock car! ( Look for it in the hobby section, for $6.)

The Gatefold Book of Fire Engines,
     36 fire engines, from the Prospect/Ford of 1920 to the AEC Merryweather 1967, all displayed on four page fold-outs.  Each section includes photos of  and specifications for each fire engine:  its length, height, engine cylinders, transmission gears, tank volume and pump capacity....  (Look for it in the transportation section, for $4.)

Enjoy!
    

Coming soon!

We've been notified that we'll soon be receiving a large donation of VHS videotapes.  These will be available at just 50 cents per tape.  We're not sure what titles will be coming in, but did you know some VHS tapes are collectible?  Here's an article by a friend of our shop that explains this interesting hobby.  Keep an eye on this blog for the date the tapes will arrive -- it'll be in the next couple of weeks.

Christmas week shop hours

The shop will be open regular hours this week with the following exceptions:

• Friday, Dec. 24, shop opens at 11 a.m. but may close early at the staff's discretion.
• Saturday, Dec. 25, shop closed.
• Sunday, Dec. 26, shop also closed.

If you can't stop in by Friday, we'll reopen Tuesday, Dec. 28 at 11 a.m.  Happy holidays, and hope to see you soon!

Gift certificates now available

Just the thing for the omnivorous Rochester-area reader on your list:  a Houghton Book Shop gift certificate!  We can make this out for you in any denomination.  If you're purchasing at the shop, please bring cash in the desired amount.  If you don't live in the area but would like to purchase a gift certificate, send us a check in the desired amount (sales tax not charged on gift certificates) and as soon as it clears we'll be happy to send the certificate either to you or to your gift recipient.  Just include the address where you'd like it sent.  Postage is on us.

Sold on ABEbooks in November

The 'Painter's Manual' of Dionysius of Fourna by Paul Hetherington and the 1952 holiday issue of the fascinating vintage magazine Gentry.  To see our current on-line inventory, click the link at right.

SciFi / Fantasy

Check out our large selection of Anne Rice and Dean Koontz hardcover books.

We also have the "Mega-Millenium" series by Paul Meier and Robert Wise and "Cyteen" by C.J.Cherryh.

About those extra deals... -- SOLD, BULK SALE

When you come to the shop, make sure to visit the books in our back hall (the entrance across from Salena's).  There you'll find books sale priced at $1 and also 50 cents. 

The dollar books include a number of publisher's overstock titles, including many cookbooks, all new and ideal for gifts, also a wide range of theology hardcover ex-libs including hard-to-find titles.  For 50 cents we're offering the paperbacks in the theology collection.  Just a little "something extra" for the holiday sale!

Attention Civil War/Abraham Lincoln aficionados

Just into our biography section...Carl Sandburg's four-volume set of Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. This collection, priced at $30.00, features hundreds of photographs, maps, cartoons of the day, letters and other documents. A fascinating holiday gift for that history buff on your list, or just for yourself.  And you thought Carl Sandburg was only a poet!   ***SOLD***

Thank you, News 10 NBC!

News 10 NBC gave us some nice coverage for the opening of our Holiday Half-Price Sale, coinciding with National Small Business Saturday.

You can read and see their story here, and don't forget that our sale runs through Dec. 18 and we'll be continuing to stock new book selections at half price right through that date.

Rochester's favorite golfer... times 24!

We just received a large donation of publisher's overstock titles, and among them is Lopez On Golf by Rochester's favorite golfer, Nancy Lopez, winner of the Rochester International LPGA tournament in 1978. 1980, and 1981.  We have 24 copies of this hardcover book, written in 1987 (this is the UK edition of 1988), priced right for gift-giving at $4 a copy.  You can find them tucked under the holiday books table across from the Sports section.

Small Business Saturday: make plans now!

Black Friday's the day for killer deals at big retailers, and Cyber Monday's the day for on-line steals, but this year there's a new shopper-tunity in the mix, and that's National Small Business Saturday, Nov. 27.

The Houghton Book Shop is doing its part!  Our annual Holiday Half Price Sale kicks off that day, 11 a.m.-4 p.m., with everything in the shop on sale, almost all at half price.  Plus, our back hall is full of books in boxes that will be at a special discount TBA. 

We encourage you to also shop our Village Gate neighbor stores, the entire Neighborhood of the Arts, and the other bookstores that belong to the Rochester Antiquarian Book Dealers Association (list available from our shop).

Watch the blog for more details about our upcoming sale!  See you soon!

Great. Cheap. Gifts.

Hoping to emerge from the holiday season free of burdensome credit card bills?  We're a great source for inexpensive gifts for the readers on your list.  Our donated books come in various conditions, including virtually new.  They also come in "hard to find".  We literally have something for everyone.  Check us now for the biggest selection (we're overflowing with year-end donations) or wait just a bit for unbelievable prices during our upcoming half-price sale.  We'll also be offering gift certificates in any denomination (cash purchase only).  Details coming soon.  Ho ho ho!

For tweens and teens

We have 40 volumes of the ValueTales series by Ann Donegan Johnson. These delightful stories "use a real-life person to exemplify an important value and are suitable for children in the late elementary years". Our set includes the stories of Mother Theresa, Thomas Jefferson, Beethoven, Jackie Robinson, Cesar Chavez, Lucille Ball, and many others.  You can find them in our Children's section at $1.75 each.

Sold on ABEbooks in October

The Bumper Book, a beautiful oversized children's picture book edited by Watty Piper and illustrated by Eulalie, and The Hidden Years at Nazareth, a sermon by G. Campbell Morgan.  Use the link at right to visit our ABEbooks page.

Calling animal lovers

We just recieved the illustrated encyclopedia of the animal kingdom. A complete 20 volume set in very good condition ($30). Compare to $50 at amazon.com.  Come check it out in our nature section!

Reading through the alphabet with Sue Grafton

We've just added a number of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone mysteries to our Mystery section.  We have A Is for Alibi and B Is for Burglar in paperback, and then the following letter mysteries in trade hardcover, book club hardcover, and/or paperback: G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U.  All priced $3 or less.  We've also added many titles by other authors, come take a look.

100 titles now on ABEbooks

We're halfway to our goal of 200 titles constantly listed on ABEbooks!  Check out our updated selection using the link at right.  If you shop our bricks/mortar store in Rochester, yes, you can purchase these books at our shop and save the shipping charge.  Just ask one of our volunteers to bring out the title you'd like to purchase.

More about the theology books

These have now been sorted.  There are boxes in the back hall on each side of the back door, extending to the cross-aisle on the left side and the shelving unit on the right side.  These books will be available at $1 per hardcover and 50 cents per paperback, first come, first served, for the next week.

Pass the word to your minister or church librarian!

NEWS FLASH: Today only!

We've received about 70 cartons of library discard theology books resulting from the consolidation of two Houghton College libraries.  We're offering bulk discounts on these books THIS AFTERNOON ONLY, 1-4 PM.  As we're still sorting the books, we reserve the right to withhold certain volumes from the bulk purchase offering.

We've got that holiday feeling...

Our new fiction table's been temporarily transformed into a holiday books table.  We have a big selection of gift books, recipe and crafts books, and Christmas-themed fiction.

If you're planning on making gifts this season, we also have shelves of sewing, crafts, and cookbooks located near the new holiday table.  Ask a volunteer to show you where they are.

Our new fiction arrivals are temporarily located on the cart near the checkout desk.  A few are also in boxes under the holiday table.

The spoken word

We just received a number of unusual spoken word recordings on vinyl LPs.  These are available in our record bins at $1 per disk, and include:

• The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien, read by Nicol Williamson (4 disks) -- SOLD
• The JRR Tolkien Soundbook, a 4-disk set including Tolkien reading and singing excerpts from The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and Poems and Songs of Middle Earth, and Christopher Tolkien reading from The Silmarillion -- SOLD
• Tennessee Williams reading from The Glass Menagerie, The Yellow Bird, and Five Poems (1 disk) -- SOLD
• A selection of readings from the works of Stephen Crane by Jared Reed (1 disk) -- (SOLD)
• Stephen Vincent Benet's John Brown's Body read by Tyrone Power, Dame Judith Anderson, and Raymond Massey (2 disks)  -- SOLD
• America the Beautiful: The Heart of America in Poetry read by Vincent Price (1 disk, popular American poems) -- SOLD
• Emily Dickinson's Letters read by Samuel Charters (1 disk) -- SOLD
• Readings from Walt Whitman (excerpts from Leaves of Grass) read by the University Players (1 disk) -- SOLD
• New York 19, local lore of Manhattan's 19th Ward, recorded and narrated by Tony Schwartz (1 disk) -- SOLD
• Selections from Herman Melville's Moby Dick read by Louis Zorich (1 disk) -- (SOLD)

Stop in and check out these and the other new selections we put out each day.

Mysterious goings-on

We've moved our true crime books into the General Nonfiction section, alphabetical by author.  This frees up a shelf for more novels in the Mystery section.  Enjoy!

Sold on ABEbooks in September

William Eggleston's Guide, a rare and desirable book of photography published in a limited edition by the Museum of Modern Art.  Check our ABE "rare books room" for a wide variety of interesting reading!

Something for Latin lovers

...or is that "lovers of Latin"?  Either way, please note that our Latin language books are moving back to the Languages section from the Greek/Latin literature shelf.  Currently we have a set of Vis-Ed Latin flashcards ($2 -- SOLD), a thumb-indexed Latin-English English-Latin dictionary ($3 -- SOLD), an interlinear translation of Caesar's Gallic War ($2 -- SOLD), and a paperbound book of Latin Crosswords ($2 -- SOLD), among other things. Stop by, tempus fugit.

Cayce at the bat -- MOST SOLD

We've received a donation of about a dozen paperback titles by and about Edgar Cayce, "the sleeping prophet", including a fairly scarce dietary guide (eat like Edgar, prophesy like Edgar?).  You can find these on our New Age shelf and overflowing onto the Philosophy shelf above.

Book Fair follow-up

We had a great day at the Rochester Antiquarian Book Fair last Saturday, selling 40 items to 27 customers and making a lot of new friends.  Best of all, we're now in "post fair" mode.

What this means to you is that many of the books not purchased at the fair -- books we've had in storage for the past year -- will now be put out on the shop shelves, some at lower prices.  And the rest of the unsold books, over time, will become available on our ABEbooks site.  Stop in and see what's new!

Countdown to the Book Fair

The 38th Annual Rochester Antiquarian Book Fair is less than a week away, this Saturday, 10-5, Minett Hall at the County Fairgrounds in Henrietta.

We still have a few coupons left for half-price admission (save $2).  Please stop in if you need one.

If you've never attended the book fair, you owe yourself.  All the local used book dealers are there along with others from many states.  You can find everything from medieval incunabula to modern books autographed by today's hottest authors.

We'll be bringing a mix of books from our ABEbooks inventory, the best of our shop stock, and books we've saved especially for the fair.  We know that budgets aren't what they used to be, so we'll have a good selection of books under $10, and hopefully, something for everyone!

"Rumer" has it...

... that we just uncovered a big pile of Rumer Godden novels for your late summer reading pleasure!  These are library discards at $1 per hardcover book, most in those nice plastic library jackets.  The titles we have are:

The Battle of the Villa Fiorita (SOLD)
China Court
The Diddakoi (SOLD)
An Episode of Sparrows (SOLD)
Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy
In This House of Brede (SOLD)
The Peacock Spring (SOLD)

You'll find them on our New Fiction table.

Sold on ABEbooks in August

We've sold the following items on ABEbooks this month: anaRchy, poetry by John Cage; Shadows on the Wall, a rare Dark Shadows TV show collectible; Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, a seminal two-volume historical text.  See what we're offering by clicking the link at the upper right and then "list books".

Vintage Hardy Boys (SOLD)

Just in, a group of vintage children's series books, 50s mostly, including a number of Hardy Boys titles in jackets.  Condition of the books varies.  We'll be pricing them through the week.  If you're interested in knowing when the Hardy Boys books will be available, e-mail us with contact info and we'll notify you.  Prices TBD, but probably quite reasonable since the books were well-loved and many times read.

Roycroft titles from $5 to $25

Just received a few Elbert Hubbard/Roycrofters titles.  We have three individual volumes from various editions of Little Journeys priced from $5 to $18 each, also a nice copy of Elbert Hubbard's Scrap Book at $10 (SOLD) and a 1907 first edition of White Magnolias (Dard Hunter-designed) at $25.  The books are in our glass case except for the newest of the Little Journeys volumes, which is in the Sets section.

$2 off Rochester Antiquarian Book Fair admission

Stop in for a coupon for half-price admission to the Book Fair, Saturday, Sept. 11, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Minnett Hall, Monroe County Fairgrounds (Henrietta).

We'll have a booth there featuring many books not on the shop shelves (our ABEbooks inventory).  A great chance to see these books "live" and meet up with your fellow booklovers!

Mark your calendar and don't forget to pick up the coupon so you'll have more to spend on BOOKS!

Atlas and Encyclopedia of Ireland (SOLD)

Geography and History of Ireland. Published by Murphy and McCarthy in 1900 with outstanding illustrations (some in color)

Thank you, Bishop Kearney High School!

We've just received a very large donation (close to 30 boxes) of books from the Bishop Kearney High School library.  If you have young readers at home and like the idea of sturdy, library-bound and jacketed copies of great youth classics, stop in and see us.  We'll be happy to sell you books from the boxes in our back hallway at $1 per book!

Some nice vintage children's sets

We have three nice, older children's (partial) sets available:

• A complete Childcraft from 1949, $40
• A Children's Hour set from 1953, vols.1-4 and 6-16, $30
• Young Folks' Library, vols. 1-19 of 20, 1910, $50.

If you like turn-of-the century children's books or old readers, we have some of them also.

For the first post, not books

While we generally don't accept donations of vinyl records (contact The Bop Shop across the courtyard to sell your records) we just couldn't say no to a wonderful collection of 80s jazz, soul, and R&B.  We have these priced at just $1 per disc.  Most are in vinyl sleeves!