Recently I mused upon lazily collecting some of the chapbooks in the Little Books series from Borderlands Press. Having having owned one of the books for many years I happened to pick up a couple more. Perhaps that strange human characteristic of wanting to gather more of the same, I went ahead and looked for other books.

There are two limitations in this effort. First, my price threshold is fairly low; I don’t foresee spending more than $45 for a single book, especially given that these are small chapbooks. Sure, they’re limited to 500 (in most cases) copies, and are signed. But, is that such a big deal? Second, some are hard to find. I’ve checked the usual suspects like Bookfinder and eBay, and so far have been able to locate listings for all but 11 of the books.

What’s my ceiling here, I wonder? So far 53 books have been published. I now own 7, and possibly may pick up another 10-15 before I hit my price ceiling. At what point does it become an obsession? Probably never. To consider having less than half of the complete set is, to a completist, somewhat of a disappointment. The most expensive listing I’ve seen so far is $200 for (to me) an unknown author. There are two or three writers whose books in this series likely will never reach the market for less than $500. Is it then worth it owning a tiny piece of cardboard and paper?

As I’ve said before, I’m more of a haphazard collector when it comes to books. I want the ones that I can read, that fit my interests, and fall under a reasonable budget. My interests are narrow. Generally I’ll focus on authors I like, such as Jack Vance, James P. Blaylock, Tim Powers, Michael Shea, a few others. In a few small cases I’ve looked at publishers as an option. I own all but one of the Golden Gryphon hard covers. I considered trying to collect Arkham House or Dark Harvest, but many of the books from the former are beyond expensive. When it comes to the latter, I only really focused on their Night Visions series, where the only one I don’t have is impossible to find.

I read about other book collectors and marvel at their persistence and resourcefulness. To me there’s a certain joy in holding a rare book, but if there are multiple states, such as trade, limited, and deluxe limited, then I’ll happily own the trade edition. Slipcases, tray cases, these mean nothing to me if I can have the same book in a decent edition.

Many years ago, so far back I cannot remember when or when, I bought a copy of F. Paul Wilson’s chapbook, A Little Beige Book of Nondescript Stories. This apparently is a series of small chapbooks published over the years by Borderlands Press. I was, at that time, more interested in picking up books by Wilson than in collecting a series of small (and, to me at least, expensive) chapbooks, so I never looked at buying any of the other books. Wilson’s book was apparently the ninth (or thereabouts) published, and part of what was then called Series I. Each book is published in a limited edition of 500 (though I have seen reports of some up to 600).

Over the years Borderlands Press has continued to release new books in the series. There are now over 50 of these books. There are 15 books in each series, and it’s now up to series IV (4). In looking for other books—unrelated to this series—I’ve seen mention of these again and again, which piqued my curiosity. At this point, there are so many in the series, and most of the older ones are prohibitively expensive, or impossible to find, that joining the search for them seems insane. The rabid collector out there might be picking up and storing what they can find, as well as some dealers who bought a bunch of each title and have held onto them, listing them for sale at handsome (to them) prices. I can’t see spending some of the money being asked for a few of the rarer ones.

All that being said, I recently picked up a pair of other books in this series, almost by chance. I was amused to find that they are not a uniform size. With each series, the height of the books increases slightly. If someone were to display all books in a shelf, they would appear in various colors (fine), but not a uniform height (strange for a dedicated series like this). Whether this was a conscious decision, or an aesthetic one, I don’t know. As a matter of idle curiosity, I made a list of all the books, then did searches online to compare prices. Of the ones that I found, there are a few that approach or exceed $150, which seems a lot for such a little book. Most of the newer releases can be found for $30-40, and there are some older ones that simply do not show up in any searches.

This all goes to show that if you want to collect a series like this, and be able to find all of them at decent prices, you need to get in early, and stick with the program. Arriving to the scene years later, like myself, means that I will need to be content with owning maybe five to 15 of these books. Again, this goes to show that I’m among the lower left side of the curve of the collector bell curve.

Many years ago, I read the first four books of Stephen King’s series about the Dark Tower in sequence. I figured it would end with the 4th novel, although there really was no ending in sight. The story, incomplete from the first instance, remained incomplete with each book. At the same time, each subsequent book grew in size (not much different from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series).

At some point, the series took on a life of its own, spanning several additional novels, either direct sequels or ones set in the same “universe.” Back in 1997 I quit reading Stephen King novels. This was after the fourth Dark Tower book, as I lost interest in his stories. King just seemed to repeat himself, or maybe I just lost interest in that genre. Not the first time, or first author, where that’s happened.

In 2012 King released the first of three sequels to the original four Dark Tower books. At that time I wasn’t too keen on reading them, as it just seemed that the story would endlessly loop: the protagonist, Roland, reaches the Dark Tower, only for events to reset and he needs to restart his quest. At least, that’s what I figured based on the first book, and I saw nothing in the other books that would indicate otherwise. I read some reviews, discovered pretty much what I expected, plus read about some bizarre mention of King as a character in his own novels, and skipped them.

A few months ago I picked up book six, Song of Susannah, in a used bookstore. The book, published by Grant, was in decent shape. I’d seen some copies in stores over the years, but passed them up. Perhaps this time I was just bored enough to buy it. I read the book, even though I’d not read book five, so this meant I missed some context. Nonetheless, is was pretty much as expected: King rambles on, taking five times as long to tell a story as one should, throwing in repetition after repetition. It was a quick read, despite being a thick book (or maybe I skipped some passages). I even saw King as a character in his own book, a cheap gesture, in my option; it detracts from the story.

A few months later I found a semi-decent copy of Wolves of the Calla, book five. The events in this book were heavily referenced in book six. Then, finally book seven; although I’ve not read the final book, I did read a synopsis. As I suspected, King couldn’t close the door, couldn’t stick the landing, and even though the telling (or parts of it) might be entertaining, the ending of the series may not be that great, may not be worth the journey.

I’ve read many a series, though most tend to be three (maybe four, sometimes five) episodes (books) long. A seven book series should have some great conclusion. Rarely happens, in books or cinematic/TV shows. Most people don’t know when to end things. J. K. Rowling went seven deep with her Harry Potter books, each longer than the previous iteration. Some parts suffered, but on the who she had a conclusion, an ending. C.S. Lewis destroyed his Narnia in his many-book series (all much slimmer than any King or Rowling books).

Meanwhile, George R. R. Martin is still working on (supposedly) his long series. Each of Martin’s books grows in scope. It begs the question: do some writers just not know how to edit, or how to condense a story down to its essentials? King’s seven book series maybe should have stopped at three, but he kept churning out massive sequel after massive sequel. It’s tough (and sad) when writers wander off the path. Maybe they feel the need to include every little bit of information from their story notes, add minutia because they think it matters. It really doesn’t.