Book haul!
May. 7th, 2010 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarasvatiOkay, I was going to write a post about the guilt associated with buying non-essential items when one is on a budget, but instead, I'm going to have a joyful squee over the wonderful haul I bought back from the library's annual book fair.
I brought home 10 back issues of National Geographic, ones I know I hadn't bought in years past, and I wished I'd had $20 to spend on those magazines alone, since they had very old issues from the late 1930s and 1940s for the same price as all the others. If I hadn't already found oher books I wanted by the time I'd come across those, I think I'd have spent my share of the $20 I brought on those old issues.
I found a few books in Mandarin that are meant for children, which I think will be very helpful for when I go back to learning more of the language. Not too useful at the moment, but they will be so in the future.
I found a copy of The Artist's Way, which I hear a lot of praise for, in good condition and selling for only 50 cents.
A sort of "basics of quilting" book, also for only 50 cents.
A book on the Japanese language, once again for 50 cents. (I love sales where paperbacks of any size and length sell for half a dollar!)
I was lucky enough to find a copy of the Sunnydale Yearbook, which, although it was $1.50, would be thoroughly enjoyed by Rei and I, as we're both big fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so I couldn't resist picking it up.
But the real pride and joy from that sale was finding a Canadian spelling book from 1883, tucked in the back underneath some much more recent textbooks. It was a little worn, and had been scribbled in by some toddler with a green crayon, but it's still in decent condition and has the signature of a young girl dating to March of 1913 inside the front cover. It was only $3, and was instantly added to my collection of 19th century books.
I have a minor obsession with the Victorian era, and it wasn't too long ago that my collection of old books started. The first was a huge family bible from the 1850s that I found at another book sale, costing me only $1. I found a Canadian history book, also from the 1880s, in a bookstore last year for $5. And now this.
I do believe I'm well on my way to stocking my own late 1800s one-room schoolhouse!
[Edit] - I believe I've found the original owner of that speller. At least the one who signed the book, anyway. If this is the right person (name and place matches, and the approximate time period matches), she got the speller when she was 13 years old. Little details like that really make history come to life for me. It's not just some random book that perhaps languished in the back of a bookstore for decades, or in a warehouse. A young girl owned it, studied from it, signed her name in it. A young girl born at the turn of the previous century, in a province that's only a few hours away from me, who possibly did go to a one-room school house. (In reading a book the other day about one-room schoolhouses in the Maritime provinces, I came across an anecdote from somebody who in all likelihood is very close to Rei's branch of his family tree, too.) She got married, and had at least five children. She lived to be 78 years old.
Maybe some day, after I've died, someone interested in this era will come across a book I owned, with my name on it, and wonder about my life too. It gives me a delightful little shiver to think about that.
I brought home 10 back issues of National Geographic, ones I know I hadn't bought in years past, and I wished I'd had $20 to spend on those magazines alone, since they had very old issues from the late 1930s and 1940s for the same price as all the others. If I hadn't already found oher books I wanted by the time I'd come across those, I think I'd have spent my share of the $20 I brought on those old issues.
I found a few books in Mandarin that are meant for children, which I think will be very helpful for when I go back to learning more of the language. Not too useful at the moment, but they will be so in the future.
I found a copy of The Artist's Way, which I hear a lot of praise for, in good condition and selling for only 50 cents.
A sort of "basics of quilting" book, also for only 50 cents.
A book on the Japanese language, once again for 50 cents. (I love sales where paperbacks of any size and length sell for half a dollar!)
I was lucky enough to find a copy of the Sunnydale Yearbook, which, although it was $1.50, would be thoroughly enjoyed by Rei and I, as we're both big fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so I couldn't resist picking it up.
But the real pride and joy from that sale was finding a Canadian spelling book from 1883, tucked in the back underneath some much more recent textbooks. It was a little worn, and had been scribbled in by some toddler with a green crayon, but it's still in decent condition and has the signature of a young girl dating to March of 1913 inside the front cover. It was only $3, and was instantly added to my collection of 19th century books.
I have a minor obsession with the Victorian era, and it wasn't too long ago that my collection of old books started. The first was a huge family bible from the 1850s that I found at another book sale, costing me only $1. I found a Canadian history book, also from the 1880s, in a bookstore last year for $5. And now this.
I do believe I'm well on my way to stocking my own late 1800s one-room schoolhouse!
[Edit] - I believe I've found the original owner of that speller. At least the one who signed the book, anyway. If this is the right person (name and place matches, and the approximate time period matches), she got the speller when she was 13 years old. Little details like that really make history come to life for me. It's not just some random book that perhaps languished in the back of a bookstore for decades, or in a warehouse. A young girl owned it, studied from it, signed her name in it. A young girl born at the turn of the previous century, in a province that's only a few hours away from me, who possibly did go to a one-room school house. (In reading a book the other day about one-room schoolhouses in the Maritime provinces, I came across an anecdote from somebody who in all likelihood is very close to Rei's branch of his family tree, too.) She got married, and had at least five children. She lived to be 78 years old.
Maybe some day, after I've died, someone interested in this era will come across a book I owned, with my name on it, and wonder about my life too. It gives me a delightful little shiver to think about that.
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Date: 2010-05-07 10:48 pm (UTC)