Booksales in full swing

At the University College Booksale yesterday I ran into Ron Nurwisah, Boy Reporter, in the mass-market paperbacks room. We combed through the bins for awhile, and I came away with a copy of Jose Saramago's The Stone Raft, but he found all kinds of great, crazy stuff -- most notably a 1950s Soviet book of predictions about life in the 21st century. It had a section of black & white photographs, mostly of Soviet technology and scientific experiments; there was one of a dog which, in the name of some obscure Lysenkoist line of scientific inquiry, had had the head of a live puppy grafted onto its body next to its own head. I am not kidding: a TWO-HEADED FRANKENDOG. It will stalk my nightmares.

I did better in the big halls upstairs, where I was pleased to find an anthology of articles from the Journal of Polymorphous Perversity called Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality, and also this. Someday, I will actually have time to read these things...

Update: Ron's blogged his finds here and here. Check it out! I'd forgotten the pulp paperback about Devil's Island -- what a classic cover!