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.

But look on the bright side...

Last week, I went to my local library's Friends group book sale in search of some cheap mystery novels or YA books that I wanted to read. Imagine my surprise when I came across a pair of Mentzer-era D&D box sets, still sealed in shrink-wrap and basically perfect, apart from a triangular-shaped box dent on the back of the Basic set. Total cost: $2 each.

Thank you, old ladies from the Friends of the Library group. You didn't quite know what you had. Now should I open them or leave them in their pristine sealed condition for a rainy day?

I've crossed the rubicon!

Thank you to everyone who has been following For A Fistful of Coppers recently. As of now, I have over 50 people following my intermittently updated ramblings and I'd like to thank each and every one of you. I appreciate every comment that I get on my posts and ideas. It's one of the reasons that I love the game blog world so much and I think I'm more confident in my posting than ever before.

As of recently, I've been binging on Dortmunder and Discworld novels and watching classic heist movies, including the Sting and the Castle of Cagliostro. I think that something really clicked for me with the Bugbears and Bankvaults post and hopefully, I can synthesize it into something fun for everyone. All I know is that I'd better start working on that Whimsy/Plot Complications deck, because what's a heist if it doesn't have unforeseen consequences?

Until next time...

And another thing...

So far, the library game has only garnered one sign-up, the aforementioned Tai. But my mother, who is teaching at a local public school, has been talking to a couple of her new students who seem like they'd be interested in the game.

However, the outpouring of support and encouragement from other children's and youth librarians has been unbelievable. When I went into work on Wednesday, LeeAnn, the children's librarian, handed me this:

Everything in this box is perfect: the book, the Keep on the Borderlands, even the dice and crayon for coloring them in. I have never met this Steve, but apparently he found this copy of Moldvay Basic in a friend's attic and decided to send it to me.

That's fucking awesome.