Today, after a decade of living in the States, I got my first American library card. I wanted to add one more person to the statistics of the library’s services because we live in dark times where cowards are trying to suppress free speech and factual knowledge. I just wanted to add another hashmark in the count for when it comes time for funding budgets.

But it turns out my library also has a basement book store where all proceeds go directly to the library’s funding and is staffed entirely by volunteers. The media in the store is stuff that has been phased out of use at the libraries, replaced with newer copies or whatever, and donations of book collections, and so on. And it turns out that book store is full of books that are Extremely In My Wheelhouse. So I spent $90 at the library today.

And now I’m going to share these books with you, via some slideshow galleries where you can peek inside the books!

Egyptian Hieroglyphs for Everyone by Joseph and Lenore Scott

I loved Egypt and Egyptology as a kid. I was sure, in first grade and second grade, that this would be of critical importance as an adult, since it featured in so many books and cartoons I interacted with back then.

Savage Sword of Conan Volume Five by Multiple People

You gotta love Savage Sword of Conan. Black and white, extremely action-packed, terrific stuff. I loved the large format of the original comics but this is pretty awesome for basically zero dollars. It’s like 1.5″ thick, tons of Cimmerian fantasy fun in this!

The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt by Richard H Wilkinson

More Egyptology. Temples! Structures! Cults! Religions! Got it all right here. Very cool book, lots of illustrations. In fact all these books are heavy on beautiful illustrations and photographs. Lovely stuff. Hugely inspiring for dungeon design, of course…

The Adventure of Archaeology by Many People (Nat’l Geographic Society)

One of several books I got with an absolutely diabolical level of cover sexiness. Art Deco trowel and brush? For real? Gold? Come on. Too good! Title only on spine is very cool. Feels mysterious. Lavishly illustrated; over 400 illustrations and 24 maps. Awesome, awesome stuff for tombs and dungeons. Today ruled.

Royal Treasures by Erich Steingräber

Another killer book, mysterious cover, gold details, title only on the spine. Great stuff. Inside? Some of the most jaw-dropping photographs I have ever seen in my life. It’s impossible to imagine the ostentatious, overwhelming wealth of the kings and queens of this planet. The elites’ thirst for gold, gems, art, and material tribute is truly obscene. Whatever you were thinking of putting in your castles and royal quarters, quadruple it and then double that and just for fun add some more. It’s absolutely bonkers. Every page is breathtaking. These works of art for royalty are truly incredible. I could make a gallery of every page and no page would be a bore. Already planning way, way more grotesquely-valued hoards now that I’ve seen this.

The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World by Guido Majno

This was such a strikingly unique book I couldn’t possibly say no. An expert pathologist and chairman of a medical university’s pathology department wrote a labor of love on the history of wound care in the ancient world. I cannot tell you how many of my buttons this pushes but as a huge Bronze Age fan and a former EMT this is so damn cool. So many fascinating tidbits, like how ancient Greeks would find skull cracks by slitting the scalp open and putting pigmented black goop all over the skull and then scraping it off and seeing where the pigment revealed the crack. Wild stuff. So cool.

Landmarks of the World’s Art (The Medieval World) by Peter Kidson

Like many of these books, this was published long ago. This was made in 1967. Another photo-rich book depicting incredible sculpture, jewelry, utensils, and architecture of the medieval era. Because of the nature of those centuries, a lot of it is Christian iconography and cathedrals, and it’s clear that the Church had some truly inspired masters at their disposal in those years. Really beautiful stuff, from the simple all the way to the wildly ornate. I need to make the rooms and buildings I describe much, much more impressive.

Splendors of China’s Forbidden City by Chuimei Ho and Bennet Bronson

Look at that goddamn statue. Like what the hell are we doing if we’re not throwing that in a dungeon? Look at that robe. Unreal. Absolutely unreal.

Castles of Europe by William Anderson

I was very lucky at this bookstore. So much appealed to me, I had to hold off from sweeping whole shelves of airplane books and such into my basket. My wife, meanwhile, only found two that caught her attention. This is one of them – a beautiful history and photolog of castles from across Europe throughout the medieval era and ending at the Renaissance era. Really inspiring stuff here. It is tempting to think of castles as dim, dull, grey stone, but the reality is often much, much more amazing.

The lessons here are:

• Books are awesome.
• Everything is way more immense, ornate, decorated, valuable, and astounding than we often give credit for – at least me. Fantasy can be unbelievably opulent and it wouldn’t even be a huge drift from reality.
• Book bans, censorship, and attacks on libraries are tools of fascist suppression.
• Support your local library. Go get a card at least, even if you never use it.

Much love friends, thanks for looking at my book haul. See you around for more next time!