often seen in the street without a hat

Is it ethical to buy used books and music instead of new copies that will financially reward the author or artist?

Okay, perhaps the writer of the query means, books that are currently available new but you are able to score a used copy in the local Oxfam shop or whatever - maybe.

(Which of course raises another effikle q that in that case it is For A Good Cause....)

And as someone who has spent years hunting down works which were not in print, or were only reprinted by Virago or the British Library or whatever after I had acquired my collection after arduous searches and considerable expense, or, finally, can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg or the Faded Page -

Hollo larfter.

True, I have also bought copies of works which I probably could have acquired shiny new, but was not entirely sure whether they were for me, taking a punt on something I had heard of, etc etc. And sometimes this led to me buying up everything the author ever wrote, their backlist, preordering their forthcoming, and so on. In hardback.

Plus, while I was appalled at those people who were buying books on Amazon and then returning them and getting their money back, and also at book piracy, on the whole I don't think it is the end-user, the actual reader, who is the greatest villain facing authors, rather than the publishing industry.

***

In other book-related news, yesterday I was still feeling the effects of a couple of bad nights with lower-back flare-up and did that thing of doing some small tedious task which has been lingering about for, lo, a very long time.

Transferring my FREE PDFs of Open Access academic books to my tablet (and also sorting out the file titles to be something a bit more helpful than a truncated ISBN) so I can, should I be moved to do so, actually read them. Some of them are things that yes, I should read, and others are more, er, aspirational.

I also, whilst faffing around with my tablet, finally got the issue with Princeton UP's annoying walled-garden app sorted. So maybe I can finally get to the books I bought in their sale nearly a year ago.

What I read

Finished Dance and Skylark, which was a bit slight (felt there was a certain unresolved slashy subtext going on between Stephen and his former Greek-American wartime comrade in arms, hmmm) though I marked it up for the women characters looking as if they might be a bit one-dimensional and then revealing other facets.

Katherine V Forrest, Delafield (2022) - Kate Delafield, still retired, dealing with a stalker who is a woman who her poor handling of a case way back in her career led to being falsely imprisoned, and now released through the Innocence Project, also her PTSD issues, etc, also old relationship stuff.

Long Live Great Bardfield: The Autobiography of Tirzah Garwood - Persephone edition, 2016, initially published in limited edition 2012 - her memoir written when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy in the 1940s, for her family, edited with some supplementary material by her daughter. Said a bit about it here.

Ursula Whitcher, North Continent Ribbon (2024) - v good.

KJ Charles, The Henchmen of Zenda (2018), re-read because not feeling up to much.

On the go

Still dipping into Melissa Scott, Scenes from the City.

Have started the other book for review - wow there is a lot of insider baseball stuff about the Parliamentary toings and froings over the legislation in question, or maybe I mean, how the sausage got made - and maybe my general state at the moment is not quite in the right space.

Just started, Kris Ripper, The Life Revamp (The Love Study #3) (2021) because it was on offer in my Recommended for You on Kobo today.

Up Next

New Literary Review.

Otherwise, not sure.