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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8683 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026

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I recently purchased a huge number of rare, old, or first edition books at auction. I don't intend to physically read any of the copies, they have a totemic value to me.

Exciting, anything particularly fun?

I am going to take this opportunity to brag about the 1st (London) edition of Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia I found at an estate sale for the princely sum of $1. Buried under a stack of James Patterson and John Grisham, priced at the standard hardback rate. The cover was clumsily repaired using a baseball stitch as some point, but to me that adds to the charm if not the value. Possibly owned by a state representative back in the day. If it were the private press French edition I'd have to sell it, but this one I can enjoy having in my collection.

In a sense, a book like that, a dead novel that hasn't been read in decades, has been given new and eternal life, becoming a mote within the great consciousness. Couldn't a turn of phrase or a piece of advice from an 80s airport novel become, by whatever occult means within the system, revived and returned to the discourse?

Beautifully put.

Exciting, anything particularly fun?

Several first printings of Hemingway, a first edition of Candace Bushnell's original pre-tv Sex and the City for Mrs. FiveHour, several James Baldwins, an 1831 leather set of Napoleon's memoirs, a French set of Hugo's works from the mid 1800s, a copy of the War Department's official history of "The World War" published in 1919, and another item so rare and strange that I have no idea how to describe it on the public web because I would irrevocably doxx myself if it were searchable.

another item so rare and strange that I have no idea how to describe it on the public web because I would irrevocably doxx myself if it were searchable.

That is a special and fun sentence clause to get to write. Grats on the sweet haul.

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