Books you regret (not) buying

What are the books you regret not buying?

This concerns mainly books now out of print, that you can't find in used bookstores or online, or just that special edition that you can't seem to get anymore.

For me this would be a Dutch translation of Proust's In search of lost time, which came in a white box, containing the seven books in paperback with black and white photographs on the covers. It is currently not available anymore, and libraries have older hard covers but not all of them together. I have to order them from all over the country and really I rather own the set than read twenty year old library books that countless people touched before me.

What are the books you regret buying?

I have the feeling more people will regret not buying certain books, but there are also the cases of books we own, that we might regret getting since we will probably never read them.

I remember being very excited, when a beautiful new hardcover edition of Jean-paul Sartre's Being and nothingness was printed, again in a Dutch translation. So excited, in a youthful way, without any education in academic philosophy, that I instantly bought it. Of course then the whole feeling I had on Existentialism was that I liked that philosophies principles, and the photographs of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and the rebelliousness I associated with it. I've had the book several years now, and I haven't read past the first few pages. I doubt I will without any introduction. I found a sort-of introduction to Existential-Phenomenological thought but that still is very academic and hard to read.

Had I not bought Being and Nothingness that year, I might have saved enough money for Proust.

So what are your picks for books that you regret not getting when you had the chance, and what are some of the books you look at and know you bought them without regard for actually reading them some time?

When I was trying to acquire first editions of Sinclair Lewis' books I found on with the bookplate or Aurthur and Susan Marx, Harpo and wife. It was only $200.00 but that was, and is way out of my price range. I think it was Babbitt but after a decade all I am sure of is it was Harpo's copy.

An edition of the 1940 Newbery Award winner Daniel Boone by James Daugherty. I saw it at a book stall in an antique mall about 12 years ago; it was about $45. It's been out of print forever, and one of the few Newbery's I haven't read. Have been kicking myself ever since for not getting it. It was a discarded library copy; I've never understood how a public library would have gotten rid of a Newbery award book that is next impossible to replace. I believe it's one of the few, if not only, Newbery that is out of print, although I think several of the early Honor books are.

I can't think of anything that I regret not buying and the things that I regret buying are too numerous to mention. (Fortunately, I think, there are more I regret buying than I regret reading).

However, I have two big regrets and those are children's books my mother threw out. One was The Singing Skyscraper (about a skyscraper who learned to sing from a bird, though I don't know why) and the other is Mr. Bumbletoes of Bimbleton about the hapless residents of a a child's model railway village. Unfortunately, I didn't figure out that it was a model railway village until my late teens when I didn't have time to reread the book. When I got home from college, it was gone. But she did keep Ted Key's So'm I (touchstone not coming up), so I'm not totally bereft.

4> I was curious about your Mr. Bumbletoes. One copy available at more than $300!!
But one entry seems to imply that it was collected with other stories in a book starting with the letter "C"
Loganberrybooks.com/solved-c is what comes up. I searched the page, but haven't found the particulars.

You might give it a look, too.

5: Thanks! The price of the book itself has gone up since the last time I looked, but I'll look into the collected one.

Aulsmith,

i've stayed on the job.
I just ordered a copy of The Wonder Gift Book for Children, which is by the same publisher and claims to have Bumbletoe stories in it. It is not expensive, so you might try a copy. I won't get hold of mine for a couple of weeks, and I'll let you know what is in it.

I also found a reference to a book called "The Bumbletoes" written by Girta Sowerby, and illustrated by her sister, Millicent Sowerby in 1907. Millicent is on the A-list of Golden Age illustrators.
I wonder if this is the inspiration for L.C. Ockenden a generation later.

7: Thanks so much. I wonder if the children in Okenden's story read the Sowerby story and it'll be one of those incestuous children's literature affairs like Edward Eager and E. Nesbit? I'll look forward to your report.

>7 2wonderY:-8 (Sowerbys)
Any idea if Girta and Millicent are related to Jane, the author of Victorian Lace Today?

9: Not a clue.

correcting my error in 7 - it's Githa, not Girta.

My mom and I missed our chance to buy all the Little House books when they were actually available in bookstores. It's hard to find them these days, even on the internet. But someday I do hope to have all of the books. The ones I've read I loved, and I'd like to read the full series someday.

>7 2wonderY:-9
Or the bankrupt landowner in Framley Parsonage? - It's not a very uncommon name in Britain: there are at least two places in Yorkshire called Sowerby, and probably more elsewhere.

My biggest regret concerning books is not so much for the books that I didn't buy, but rather for the libraries I didn't take proper advantage of when I had the chance. My school had a wonderful fiction library, mostly consisting of "boys' books" and popular fiction that must have been donated about the time the school moved into new buildings in the 1920s. I remember reading a lot of Conan Doyle, Rider Haggard, John Buchan, and P.G. Wodehouse's school stories, but there must have been all sorts of more obscure things that I would find fascinating now that I'm a bit older, but that simply didn't make an impact at the time. I imagine they'll have had them valued in the meantime, and either sold them off or put the rarer items out of the reach of inky small boys. Then as an undergraduate I wasted three years' access to a wonderful university library doing nothing but but the reading I needed for my essays...

Never got around to buying A. Wainwright's Guide to the Northern Fells when it was still in print at a sensible price. Still kicking myself.

>14 MyopicBookworm:
That's a point - I'd forgotten about AW. The friend I did most of my walking with back then had practically a full set, so I never bothered to buy any.

there was a 1st edition of Truman Capote's IN COLD BLOOD I wish I'd picked up. Maybe I'll find another!

Thank you for posting this question, I'm tired of thinking about regrets from years ago and your question inspired me to join this site as a way to hone my bibliophilia and move on from the past.

Years ago, when I was 18 or 19 I was in a used bookstore and I chanced upon an old Rudyard Kipling book, it must've been from the turn of the 20th century. I forget the title, but what has always haunted me is that when I opened the book to study it, I found the inside binding decorated with golden grinning elephants with lotus blossoms, but more shockingly, swastikas. This bizarre Oriental elephant and swastika combo was inlayed inside the back and front of the book. I was ignorant of so much then and immediately put the book down thinking Kipling had some kind of Aryan Race leaning or sponsorship. Reading poems like "The White Man's Burden" didn't help my prejuduce then, and I had a history teacher who reviled his Imperial views. Years later, I finally did some research after realizing I enjoyed his writings, and I found that he used the swastika as a personal sigil long before the rise of the Third Reich or it's bastard leaders.

Rudyard Kipling books with swastikas were discontinued by 1930 during the political changes in Germany, and Rudyard Kipling was not ignorant that something 'wrong' was going on, and would later deliver a speech warning Britain of these changed in Germany. In short, Kipling books with swastikas are not Nazi associated and are quite rare now.

Stupid. me.

An old Gustave Dore illustrated "Divine Comedy". I let it go.

I used to walk right past the name "HARLAN ELLISON", a great author of classic sci-fi and I deeply regret that now, I've saw his name more often years ago.

There are so many books I've wasted money on, mostly out of loneliness and boredom during periods of my life where I had more money then good judgement, and less good company to keep me thinking sane. I've had a psychological precondition to by excess copies of Alice in Wonderland, Le Morte de Arthur, The Rubaiyat and other classic titles which I became obsessed over having numerous different editions of. And not all these copies were worth the expenses stupid bookstore owners charge.

There's been so much money wasted on garbage, and so much time wasted on regretting what treasure I didn't buy. Money. Time. Regret. It's my choice right now if I want to keep thining about it, or not. No. I don't want to think about this anymore, I'm already inspired to do better.

But this is the fire in all our bellies that keeps us looking, keeps us collecting, keeps us reading and discovering more.

Thank you, I just needed to do this. I hope you find whatever Proust you may still be looking for, but more importantly, I would encourage you to force your way through Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness', even without an introduction you may find something by accident. But who am I to suggest that?

Peace yo.

Somewhere I had a copy of The Just So Stories I wish I could find it now.

#14 - recently rereleased I think. I've certainly seen plenty of copies of Wainwrights around in the bookshops in Keswick etc.

Obviously not the same as an original copy, but I'm not sure if that's what you meant.

Nothing that particularly sticks in my mind as somethign I should have bought.

A collection of the works of D. T. Suzuki, hand-bound by a former owner. Didn't think I had the space.

>19 reading_fox: Yes, I'm sure I could pick one up some time. Here's hoping.

There are a couple I would have liked to have had but simply couldn't afford. Is that a regret? I don't think so...

In high school I bought A Sense of Where You Are by John Mcphee. I was not a collector then so I did not buy some of his earlier, subsequent books. Now that I want to complete my McPhee series, I find the early first editions pricey.

ESTONIAN LITERATURE

What was I thinking?! It was right there, next to Latvian literature!! Why in the world did I buy one and not the other??? WHAT POSSESSED ME?! I'll never see it again!

I assumed that the AbeBook.com vendor was honest and competent, but he screwed up the E-mail correspondence and so I lost a score of Magnard's GUERCOEUR autographed by his -- the composer's, not the bookseller's -- daughter. Also lost a d'Aurevilly in lovely red leather and Professor Villari's Life of Savonarolla in the uncertainty during the last months of the incomparable Florence Shay and the subsequent looting of her store. Also a copy of Bentivolgio's GUERRA DI FIANDRA by mail from Blackwood's: ridiculously low price, but I was desperately poor then. It all works out. Eppur si muove.

Life tends to work in a funny way - if you are patient enough, almost anything you regret not buying will either turn into something you find without even looking or into a better edition down the road.

As for buying... I've never regretted a book I had bought - even when the book was not good.