Via: GoodReads.com
A wee while ago I espoused the virtues of the library as a great source for animation and animation-related books. Naturally, it is not the only source in existence for reading materials. Frankly, I’m quite ashamed that I forgot to mention the second-hand book shop as well.
While up in western New York this past weekend (hence the brief hiatus), I happened to pay a visit to a local bookshop whose owners had decided it was time to enjoy the finer things in life and were in the process of flogging off ever single book in the place (all 200,000 of them) for the princely sum of $2 each. Yes, that’s right, two of your fine [American] dollars would get you any book in the joint.
Now myself, being the bookworm type, simply had to pop in and take a bit of a nose around to see what I could find. The only downside to such shops is that you can guarantee that nothing is really organised and that a bit of foraging is required to find what you’re looking for.
So, in amongst the Idiot’s Guide to Netscape and first editions of Nancy Drew there is the possibility of finding some, shall we say, diamonds in the rough. Thankfully, I did manage to locate said diamonds, and promptly cleaned the guy out of every decent animation book he had, all 6 of them!
There’s a biography of Chuck Jones by Hugh Kenner that looks pretty decent, a book dedicated to Big Little Books that has a ton of early, 1930s-era animation, comic and detective books and Walt in Wonderland, which focuses on his silent animated films from the 20s.
Excited as I was to start reading those, they will have to wait. Before then, I have to plough through How to Make Animated Movies by Anthony Kinsey, the official Walt Disney biography by Bob Thomas (very excited to read this) and last but certainly not least, “That’s All Folks: The Art of Warner Bros. Animation” by Steve Schneider.
Are these real gems of book? Nah, they’re fairly run of the mill (except the Kinsey book, that seems pretty rare) and any second-hand bookshop is likely to be the same. Nonetheless, if I hadn’t stopped in and looked around, I wouldn’t have all these lovely books to read in the coming months. 🙂