Thought I’d share this mad seller on Ebay with you. The company is called baham_books
and they are based in Reading. All UK deliveries are free postage, but I don’t know whether they sell elsewhere or what they charge if they do. This is a seriously big operation with about five million books on at any one time. Music CDs are a tiny proportion of the business (there are only around 83,000 listed!). As such, not much care has gone into their listing. Most are listed at £2.49, and all seem to have been graded as GOOD, in other words they’ve not been checked. The listings themselves are appalling – often just album title and EAN code, so there are plenty of listings out there for ‘Greatest Hits’ or ‘Symphony no.3’ or such like with no indication as to whose. With the EAN number and Discogs open its not hard to find what they are, but it needs a bit of work, so things aren’t going to come up on searches.
So far the worst thing I’ve had condition wise is a scratchy, but playable, double CD of Beethoven Masses. The best, which came today, were two box sets from the Philips Mozart complete edition. Six CDs of symphonies and seven of Serenades for Orchestra in near mint condition, with slipcase and books – each £2.49! or about 40p per disc. The best bargains appear to be in classical, but I’ve also bought stuff by Richard Thompson, Songhoy Blues and Gregory Isaacs.
There is a slight downside. Things don’t always come. I guess they can’t find them so don’t send them. But refunds are promptly given without question, so it’s not really an issue.
Category Archives: Other Stuff
2024
Happy new year. I say that more in hope than expectation, because the portents for 2024 are pretty grim. COP28 was a non-event, as expected. The last seven months (December’s figures are not in) have each broken the monthly record as the hottest ever recorded, with July the hottest month overall. The area destroyed by wildfires in Canada and Greece are off the scale compared to anything seen before. And Antarctic sea ice was consistently lower than ever before throughout the year. The one bright spark was Bolsonaro’s dumping in Brazil, but while one science-denier is kicked out, any number are lining up elsewhere, including in the richest, most powerful country on the planet.
Russia’s petty, pointless and vicious assault on Ukraine continues. The loss of men and materials seems to matter little to Putin, as it was with Stalin in the forties. So far, though, it hasn’t escalated as many feared, but that remains a possibility. It’s almost the forgotten war now as Israel, true to form, has lost all sense of proportion in its response to the attack by Hamas, and now seems intent on, at best, complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza (and probably the West Bank too if they can get away with it), and at worse a genocide on the scale last seen in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. And the potential for it to spread is very real indeed. With the usual uncritical backing of the United States, other countries borders seem to matter not a jot to Netanyahu and the other Jewish supremacists that sit in his cabinet. Does this action not make the international Jewish community uncomfortable at the very least? Xi Jinping’s sabre-rattling over Taiwan is, I think, just that. Although it would seem to be a good time to strike whilst the world’s attention is diverted elsewhere, I think he’s smart enough to know that taking the island would be no cakewalk, and that the carefully cultivated political and economic ties through the belt-and-road initiative are simply not worth jeopardising. And Kim Jong Un’s talk about another Korean war is just bullshit. North Korea can’t even feed its people, let alone wage a war against the eleventh largest economy in the world.
Back home, the year will just be a long wait for this spectacularly hopeless Tory administration to be put out of its misery. The damage it is doing daily to our economy and international standing is palpable. Starmer doesn’t exactly inspire, though. And here in Scotland the SNP’s shenanigans has pretty much put paid to any hope of independence in my lifetime, I fear. So, yeah, happy new year!
Four Favourite Mind Over MIDI Album Covers
All these photos were taken within 10 miles of my house at various times
The Third Oxfam Literary Quiz
It took place on Tuesday 13th at 78 in Glasgow, and as promised, here are the questions.
WORLD CUP
The answers to each of these questions includes one of the 32 countries present at the World Cup in South Africa. Beware of homonyms
1. In which country is Hamlet set?
2. Which country gets its name from the title of an epic poem written by Spanish cleric Martin del Barco Centenera in 1602?
3. In which country was crime writer Ngaio Marsh born?
4. James Clavell’s epic 1975 novel Shogun was set in which country?
5. Which writer of schoolgirl fiction’s books include The Fortunes of Philippa?
6. In which country was Ben Okri born?
7. What is the title of John Le Carré’s 1968 spy novel set in Bonn?
8. Who wrote the children’s novel The Owl Service?
9. In which country was Albert Camus born?
10. Which French poet, novelist and playwright won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1922?
MYTHICAL CREATURES
11. What is the first book of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy?
12. Which Labour peer wrote the 2006 novel The Minotaur?
13. Which three headed creature was tricked into eating drugged honey cakes in Virgil’s Aeneid?
14. Who is the Invisible Man in HG Wells’ 1897 novel?
15. What is an Ent?
16. In whose books do the Nac Mac Feegles appear?
17. What kind of creature is CS Lewis’s Mr Tumnus?
18. Who wrote the children’s novel The Phoenix and the Carpet?
19. Who wrote the poem The Kraken?
20. Complete the quote from Psalms 22:21. “Save me from the Lion’s mouth; for thou hast heard me from the horns of…”
RAILWAYS
21. Which railway station takes its name from a Walter Scott novel?
22. Who wrote the poem Adlestrop about an unscheduled stop at a rural station?
23. “This is the night mail crossing the border / bringing the cheque and the postal order” Name the poem and poet
24. Who is Michael Bond’s most famous creation?
25. What is the name of Elizabeth Smart’s 1945 prose-poem about her affair with British poet George Barker?
26. In 2007, Peter Ashley edited a collection of poems called Railway Rhymes. Which station’s grand reopening was the book published to coincide with?
27. Who were Roberta, Peter and Phyllis Waterbury?
28. Which detective features in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express?
29. How does Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina die?
30. Who created Thomas the Tank Engine?
PUBLISHERS
31. Which publisher was set up by an Arran-born son of crofters and grandfather of a twentieth century Prime Minister in 1843?
32. Which publisher shares its name with an area of london between Euston and Holborn that includes the British Museum?
33. Which publisher is named after a small seabird of the auk family?
34. Which publisher’s name is defined as a noisy, scolding and domineering woman?
35. For which publisher did TS Eliot begin working in 1925?
36. Which publisher is named after a fish-eating bird with a large throat pouch?
37. Which publisher gets its name from the Greek god of shepherds and flocks?
38. Which publisher was co-founded by Carly Simon’s father in 1924?
39. Which publisher was known mainly for its Beatrix Potter and Observers’ books
40. What is the largest University publisher in the world?
SEQUENCES
All I need is the thing/person/book that comes fourth in the sequence. Oh, and why too
41. 1974; 1977; 1980
42. John Betjeman; Ted Hughes; Andrew Motion
43. The Jewel in the Crown; The Day of the Scorpion; The Towers of Silence
44. In historical order – Henry VI Part 1; Henry VI Part 2; Henry VI Part 3
45. 6 – Heresy; 7 – Violence; 8 – Fraud
46. 1950 Bertrand Russell; 1951 Pär Lagerkvist; 1952 Francois Mauriac
47. Sodom and Gomorrah; The Prisoner; The Fugitive
48. 2006 Kiran Desai; 2007 Anne Enright; 2008 Aravind Adiga
49. Casino Royale; Live and Let Die; Moonraker
50. The Knight; The Miller; The Reeve
SCOT OR NOT
Ten writers. All I need to know is whether they were born in Scotland (Scot) or elsewhere (Not)
51. Alistair Maclean
52. Compton Mackenzie
53. Doris Lessing
54. Denise Mina
55. Hugh MacLennan
56. Colleen McCullough
57. Neil Gunn
58. James Kelman
59. Naomi Mitchison
60. John Banville
The answers are in the comments box
Oxfam Book Quiz III
Tuesday 13th July at 8.30pm at the 78 Bar, Kelvinhaugh Street, Glasgow.
That’s the date, time and venue for the third Oxfam Book Quiz. As usual I’m both quizmaster and question setter. Last time we had 16 teams and a packed house and also a very, very close contest. Come down if you’re around. It’s free to enter.
More details here.
For everyone else, I’ll be posting the questions here afterwards so you can have a go for fun.
Music Musings and Miscellany 