Everything Printed or Recorded

We Buy Everything Printed and Recorded—and More!

/ Steve / Leave a comment

At HPB, one of our primary missions is to provide the biggest variety of printed and recorded merchandise you’ve ever seen. But we can’t do that without YOU! Of course we buy and sell a huge variety of books, but we offer so much more, based on what customers like you sell to us each and every day. As our co-founder Ken Gjemre used to say, “We buy everything printed and recorded, except yesterday’s newspaper.”

Whether Marie Kondo has convinced you to “tidy up” those closets and bookshelves or you’ve been bitten by the Spring Cleaning bug, we’re happy to help. Let’s take a closer look at the many kinds of things you can bring us for cold, hard cash! Continue reading →

All Things Printed & Recorded: Bam! Pow! The Heroic Rise of Comic Books

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This year in our HPB calendar, we’re celebrating all things printed and recorded—and played, solved, watched, etc. In other words, all the cool stuff we buy and sell in our stores. For September, we’re getting our hands dirty with a look at the history of comic books, graphic novels and manga.

Two Comic Books

TIMELINE
1933  Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics, the first modern American comic book, is published.
1938  The superhero archetype is born with the debut of Superman in Action Comics #1.
1964  The first underground comic, Frank Stack’s The Adventures of Jesus, debuts.
1992  Art Spiegelman’s Maus becomes the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize.

DID YOU KNOW?

  • The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck (1837) featured art in sequential panels and corresponding text below, making it a precursor to the modern comic book.
  • The Comics Code Authority was formed in 1954 in response to public concern over graphic content in comics. Titles from major publishers bore the CCA seal until the early 2000s.
  • Japanese comics known as manga exploded in popularity after the Second World War.

Want to dive deeper? Check out these great products!

book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabo
book The Origins of Comics: From William Hogarth to Winsor McCay by Thierry Smolderen
book The Great Comic Book Heroes by Jules Feiffer
book Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America, Bradford W. Wright
book The Spectacular Sisterhood of Superwomen: Awesome Female Characters from Comic Book History by Hope Nicholson
book A History of Underground Comics by Mark James Estren
book Graphic Novels: Everything You Need to Know by Paul Gravett
book Comics and Sequential Art by Will Eisner
book Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics by Paul Gravett
book Manga! Manga!: The World of Japanese Comics by Frederik L. Schodt
slate_film-512 American Splendor
slate_film-512 Crumb
slate_film-512 Comic Book Confidential
music-note-21 Comic Book Heroes, Rick Springfield

All Things Printed & Recorded: Video Games Come Into Play

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This year in our HPB calendar, we’re celebrating all things printed and recorded—and played, solved, watched, etc. In other words, all the cool stuff we buy and sell in our stores. For August, it’s all fun and games—video games, to be exact.

Super Mario gamesTIMELINE
1940  A computer playing the traditional game Nim is displayed at the World’s Fair.
1958  A tennis game played using an analog computer and an oscilloscope is demonstrated at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
1962  Spacewar, the first computer-based video game, is invented by an MIT student.
1975  Atari partners with Sears to release its arcade game Pong for the home market.
1985  Nintendo’s NES revives an ailing American video game industry two years after its original release in Japan, where it was called Famicom.
1995  Sony releases PlayStation in the United States. When PlayStation 2 debuts in 2000, it becomes the dominant home console.
2001  Microsoft enters the market with Xbox and hit games like Halo. Xbox 360 would debut four years later.

Continue reading →

All Things Printed & Recorded: Paperbacks – Judge Them By Their Cover

/ Half Price Books / 1 Comment

EDITOR’S NOTE: This year in our HPB calendar, we’re celebrating all things printed and recorded—and played, solved, watched, etc. In other words, all the cool stuff we buy and sell in our stores. For July, we’re going way back to cover the history of the paperback.

Penguin Waugh

DID YOU KNOW?

  • The modern paperback was born in 1935 with the hit debut of Penguin in the United Kingdom. Founder Allen Lane’s goal was to sell affordable, high-quality books to the masses in places like train stations. Their minimalistic, type-driven cover designs, color-coded by genre, became iconic.
  • Inexpensive paperbound books called dime novels were published in the US starting in 1860. Their British counterparts were called penny dreadfuls.
  • In 1939, Pocket Books launched in the US with 10 titles priced at 25¢ each. By comparison, a hardback might cost a few dollars. Pocket sold their books in subway stations, newsstands and drugstores, reaching new readers and forever changing the bookselling industry.
  • Soldier in circleSmall enough to fit in a uniform pocket, paperback books were carried by soldiers in World War II. One writer noted that “if the back trouser pocket bulged in that way,” it indicated that the soldier was a reader.

TIMELINE
17th cent.  Early softcover books are printed in Europe.
1935  Penguin publishes its first paperback, Ariel, a biography of Percy Shelley.
1938  The first US paperback, Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth, is released by Pocket and sold at Macy’s as a test.
1950  Using the brand Gold Medal Books, Fawcett begins publishing original fiction in paperback, as opposed to reprinting titles originally released in hardback.
1960  Sales of paperbacks pass those of hardcover books.

stack of paperbacksWant to dive deeper? Check out these great products!

book Reading the West: An Anthology of Dime Westerns, ed. Bill Brown
book Classic Penguin: Cover to Cover, by Paul Buckley, ed.
book Penguin By Design: A Cover Story, 1935–2005, by Phil Baines
book When Books Went to War: The Stories that Helped Us Win World War II, by Molly Guptill Manning
book Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America, by Kenneth Davis & Joann Giusto-Davis
book Paperbacks From Hell: The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction, by Grady Hendrix
slate_film-512 Paperback Dreams , directed by Alex Beckstead

 

All Things Printed & Recorded: Fast Forward – Video Hits Home

/ Mark / Leave a comment

EDITOR’S NOTE: This year in our HPB calendar, we’re celebrating all things printed and recorded—and played, solved, watched, etc. In other words, all the cool stuff we buy and sell in our stores. For June, we’re hitting rewind to check out the history of home video.

TIMELINE
1950s & 1960s  Early videotape formats are used in broadcasting but are too expensive for consumers.
1975  Sony’s Betamax format debuts. Some early players included a 19-inch color monitor.
1976  The first VCR using VHS (Video Home System), the Victor HR-3300, debuts in Japan.
1977  RCA’s VBT200 becomes the first VHS-based VCR in the US.
1987  90% of VCRs sold in the US are based on the VHS format.
2006  A History of Violence is the last major film released on VHS.
2016  The last known manufacturer of VCRs ceases production.

DID YOU KNOW?

VCR copy.png

  • Betamax had a better picture, smaller tapes and debuted first. But VHS won the “format war” thanks to longer recording times and less costly players.
  • LaserDisc, introduced in 1978, was the first optical disc format for home video. It was a hit with cinephiles and paved the way for DVD and Blu-ray.
  • With the advent of the VCR in the 1970s, consumers could, for the first time, own copies of their favorite movies and record TV shows to watch later.

Want to dive deeper? Check out these great products!
book VHS: Absurd, Odd, And Ridiculous Relics From The Videotape Era, Joe Pickett & Nick Prueher
book VHS Ate My Brain, Andrew Hawnt
book The Last Days Of Video, Jeremy Hawkins
book Video Revolutions: On The History Of A Medium, Michael Z. Newman
book Videoland: Movie Culture At The American Video Store, Daniel Herbert
slate_film-512 Rewind This!
slate_film-512 V/H/S
slate_film-512 Clerks
slate_film-512 Be Kind Rewind

All Things Printed & Recorded: Children’s Books–Adventures in Wonder

/ Jason / Leave a comment

EDITOR’S NOTE: This year in our HPB calendar, we’re celebrating all things printed and recorded—and played, solved, watched, etc. In other words, all the cool stuff we buy and sell in our stores. For May, we’ve stepped through the looking-glass to learn about the history and development of children’s literature.

PokyLittlePuppy.png

TIMELINE
1658  Orbis Pictus, the first children’s textbook with pictures, is published.
1744  John Newbery releases A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, considered the first children’s book.
1942  The Poky Little Puppy is among the first 12 Little Golden Book titles.
1963  Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are raises the level of artistry in children’s picture books.

Alice vintage bookDID YOU KNOW?

  • Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, published in 1865, was a watershed in children’s literature. Its emphasis on fantasy and childlike imagination was a departure from earlier works for kids, which were largely educational and reality-based.
  • Competition with the Soviets fueled US efforts to create more engaging books for young readers. One result was the Beginner Books imprint, founded in 1957 by Phyllis Cerf, Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and Helen Geisel.
  • Released in 1942 and still in print today, Seventeenth Summer by Maurine Daly, is often cited as the first modern young adult (YA) book.

~~~

Want to dive deeper? Check out these great products!

book The History of Children’s Books in 100 Books, Roderick Cave and Sara Ayad
book Children’s Literature: An Illustrated History, Peter Hunt, ed.
book 100 Great Children’s Picturebooks, Martin Salisbury
book John Newbery: Father of Children’s Literature, Shirley Graham
book 75 Years of Little Golden Books, 1942-2017: A Commemorative Set of 12 Best Loved Books
book The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
book Theodor Geisel: A Portrait of the Man Who Became Dr. Seuss, Donald Pease
book Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult, Bruce Handy
slate_film-512 Miss Potter
slate_film-512 Finding Neverland

All Things Printed & Recorded: Revolutions in Recorded Sound

/ Jason / Leave a comment

 

EDITOR’S NOTE: This year in our HPB calendar, we’re celebrating all things printed and recorded—and played, solved, watched, etc. In other words, all the cool stuff we buy and sell in our stores. For April, we’ve got some groovy info on the history of sound recording. 

Record.png

 

DID YOU KNOW?

  • Thomas Edison’s phonograph, using a rotating cylinder wrapped in tinfoil, was the first machine to play back recorded sound. The first recording was Edison himself reciting the opening lines to “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
  • Columbia Records introduced the 12-inch, 331/3 rpm long play record in 1948. Lighter and less brittle than its predecessors, the vinyl LP would come to dominate the recorded music market. Musicians took advantage of the LP’s extended playing time to create album-length artistic statements.

Sgt Pepper and Thriller

TIMELINE
1877  Thomas Edison invents the phonograph.
1889  Emile Berliner’s gramophone, which uses discs instead of cylinders, debuts.
1949  RCA Victor introduces the 45 rpm single a year after Columbia debuts its 331/3 LP.
1957  Stereo records appear.
2007  Vinyl, long considered obsolete, resurges in popularity.

old victrola

Want to dive deeper? Check out these great products!

slate_film-512 High Fidelity
book Dust & Grooves: Adventures in Record Collecting, Eilon Paz
book Vinyl: The Analogue Record in the Digital Age, Dominik Bartmanski & Ian Woodward book The Vinyl Detective: The Run-Out Groove, Andrew Cartmel
book Sound Recording: The Life Story of a Technology, David L. Morton, Jr.
book Chasing Sound: Technology, Culture and the Art of Studio Recording from Edison to the LP, Susan Schmidt Horning
book Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music, Greg Milner
book Old Records Never Die: One Man’s Quest for His Vinyl and His Past, Eric Spitznagel

All Things Printed & Recorded: Readers Flip for Magazines

/ Mark / Leave a comment

This year in our HPB calendar, we’re celebrating all things printed and recorded—and played, solved, watched, etc. In other words, all the cool stuff we buy and sell in our stores.

For February, we’re covering a product that’s been a mainstay at HPB since we first opened: magazines.

3 Magazines.pngTIMELINE

1731  The Gentleman’s Magazine debuts in England. Its publisher invents the word “magazine” based on the Arabic word “makhazin,” meaning storehouse.
1741  Early American magazines include Ben Franklin’s General Magazine.
1842  The Illustrated London News is the first magazine with illustrations.
1898  Ladies’ Home Journal becomes the first US magazine to have one million subscribers.
1923  Time ushers in the weekly news magazine
1944  Seventeen, the first magazine targeted to teens, debuts.
2015  Approximately 7,300 different magazine titles are published in the United States.

DID YOU KNOW?

  • In the 19th and 20th centuries, American magazines spread trends nationwide and helped create a shared pop culture.
  • Around 1900, popular magazines like McClure’s began publishing pieces by reform-minded investigative journalists. Known as muckrakers, these writers aimed to expose corruption in business and government.

McClures.pngDISCOVER MORE

book Life: The Classic Collection
book Memos: The Vogue Years, Diana Vreeland
book Covering the ‘60s: George Lois – The Esquire Era, George Lois
book Muckrakers: How Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, And Lincoln Steffens Helped Expose Scandal, Inspire Reform, And Invent Investigative Journalism, Ann Bausum & Daniel Schorr
book How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time, Marisa Meltzer
slate_film-512 The Devil Wears Prada
slate_film-512 Funny Face

All Things Printed & Recorded: The Printing Press Helps the World Get Bookish

/ Jason / Leave a comment

This year in our HPB calendar (you got one, right?) we’re celebrating all things printed and recorded—and played, solved, watched, etc. In other words, all the cool stuff we sell in our stores.

For January, we’re taking a look at the development of books and printing. A good place to start, huh?

Gutenberg circleDID YOU KNOW?

  • Books were costly and relatively rare before the innovations of Johannes Gutenberg. In 1439 he developed a system of printing—using movable type and a wooden press—that was quickly adopted throughout Europe and beyond, leading to increased production of books and the spread of knowledge to the masses.
  • Movable type, where individual characters are used to create words imprinted on a page, existed as early as 1045 in China. Gutenberg was the first to make type using metal, using an alloy of lead, tin and antimony.
  • Mental Floss calculated that, throughout history, about 134,000,000 unique book titles have been published.

TIMELINE

2nd cent. BCE  In India, texts written on palm leaves are bound with twine between two boards.
antique book1st cent. The codex appears. With folded pages bound on one side between two hard covers, codices are portable, easy to use and presage the modern book.
1455  Gutenberg completes his 42-line Bible, printing 180 copies.
1810  The steam-powered printing press leads to greater speed and efficiency.
1843  Book production flourishes thanks to the steam-powered rotary press.

DISCOVER MORE

book The Gutenberg Revolution: How Printing Changed the Course of History, John Man
book Gutenberg’s Apprentice: A Novel, Alix Christie
book Five Hundred Years of Printing, S.H. Steinberg & John Trevitt
book Type: The Secret History of Letters, Simon Loxley
music-note-21 Gutenberg! The Musical, Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording
clapperboard The Book of Eli
clapperboard The Book Thief