LBSREAM (Library Book Sales Rule Everything Around Me)

Used book sales are one of my favorite things in the world. I love picking up quality mystery and fantasy novels for small amounts of money, especially when it benefits an organization like a library. Plus, every once in a while, you find something truly remarkable. A library book sale was where I found unopened copies of the Mentzer Basic and Expert box sets, as well as my early works of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and a laserdisc copy of My Name Is Trinity (for curiosity's sake).

I was visiting a library where I am interviewing for a position in the following week, checking out the selection and space, when I noticed that they have a section in the back shelves for a Friends of the Library Book Sale. I felt it was my duty to check out their selection and see if I could find any gems. Outside of my standard searches for cheap Elmore Leonard and Terry Pratchett, I found some old sci-fi paperbacks that demanded attention.


I read my father's copy of Creatures of Light and Darkness when I was a teenager, but Jack of Shadows was a Zelazny work I'd always heard about, but never seen. I was glad that I picked up both of them.


Even at used book stores, I could only find the later Myth collections by Robert Aspirin, so finding the first three books in one volume was really cool and really cheap.

Oh yeah. And this pretty cool thing.

It's bright 'cause it's so awesome.

Five dollars! Five dollars for every single BECMI boxset rule and expansion packed into 304 dense-as-hell pages!

Honestly, I kind of feel bad that I picked this up for the price that I did, given that Rules Cyclopediae end up on eBay and Amazon for over $40, minimum. But there's a lot of stuff to unpack in this thing and I hope you'll stay tuned while I do.