Tuesday, December 27, 2005
No one gives me books as gifts
They don't dare. They know that if I want it, I already have it. Or that I (and they) can't afford it. Say, for instance, off the top of my head, the OED. How can any true booklover not swoon while holding a volume of this fine set?
So I end up buying myself books throughout the year, as I come across them. I just bought this at one of the other used bookshops in town: The Book-Lovers' Anthology edited by R.M. Leonard, Oxford University Press, 1911. Seven dollars. The editor's goal, as stated in the preface: "In bringing together into one volume the tributes and opinions of a galaxy of writers, my object has been the glorification of books as books, a book being regarded as a real and separate entity, and often as an end in itself." He goes on to say that book-love "...is incommunicable: it comes but happily seldom goes, as the wind which bloweth where it listeth; it is perfectly sincere, and knows nothing of conventions and sham admirations." (p.v) Sigh. I mean, really, who has published better books, throughout their long history, than Oxford University Press.
I'll be quoting liberally from The Book-Lovers' Anthology over the next few months. It's full of gems like this: "When I speak of being in contact with my books, I mean it literally. I like to lean my head against them." - J.H. Leigh Hunt, from My Books. (p.233) Something else I covet is the recent Leigh Hunt set, and while not published by Oxford, it is also priced beyond my comfort zone. That's not to say that if I wasn't leading a somewhat penurious existence I wouldn't snap it up immediately, of course.
Meanwhile, I'm putting away the fine gifts I did receive: a deluxe Scrabble set, various art supplies (I'm a painter as well as a bookseller), clothing, crockery, comestibles, and the like. Anyone receive any gifts you are especially pleased with, books or otherwise?
So I end up buying myself books throughout the year, as I come across them. I just bought this at one of the other used bookshops in town: The Book-Lovers' Anthology edited by R.M. Leonard, Oxford University Press, 1911. Seven dollars. The editor's goal, as stated in the preface: "In bringing together into one volume the tributes and opinions of a galaxy of writers, my object has been the glorification of books as books, a book being regarded as a real and separate entity, and often as an end in itself." He goes on to say that book-love "...is incommunicable: it comes but happily seldom goes, as the wind which bloweth where it listeth; it is perfectly sincere, and knows nothing of conventions and sham admirations." (p.v) Sigh. I mean, really, who has published better books, throughout their long history, than Oxford University Press.
I'll be quoting liberally from The Book-Lovers' Anthology over the next few months. It's full of gems like this: "When I speak of being in contact with my books, I mean it literally. I like to lean my head against them." - J.H. Leigh Hunt, from My Books. (p.233) Something else I covet is the recent Leigh Hunt set, and while not published by Oxford, it is also priced beyond my comfort zone. That's not to say that if I wasn't leading a somewhat penurious existence I wouldn't snap it up immediately, of course.
Meanwhile, I'm putting away the fine gifts I did receive: a deluxe Scrabble set, various art supplies (I'm a painter as well as a bookseller), clothing, crockery, comestibles, and the like. Anyone receive any gifts you are especially pleased with, books or otherwise?
Comments:
<< Home
Likewise, my family won't buy me books w/o specificity. This year I tried to be kind, and went w/ any book from the Hesperus Press, whose books are beautiful, classic, and perfect for the train ride into work. But, since I only gave the web address and couldn't specify a book dealer in my area who carries the books, I will have to search abebooks on my own.
As for purchases for myself, the new Collins Library edition of the The Riddle of the Travelling Skull was at the top of my list, and I found a copy of C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters at a used bookstore, and although I didn't plan on buying it, couldn't pass it up once I cracked the spine and found the book was dedicated to a priest, and thoroughly marked up in the margins, assumedly by said priest. Should make the read extra special.
And I want the OED, in all its gluttonous excess.
As for purchases for myself, the new Collins Library edition of the The Riddle of the Travelling Skull was at the top of my list, and I found a copy of C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters at a used bookstore, and although I didn't plan on buying it, couldn't pass it up once I cracked the spine and found the book was dedicated to a priest, and thoroughly marked up in the margins, assumedly by said priest. Should make the read extra special.
And I want the OED, in all its gluttonous excess.
# posted by 
: 8:17 PM
: 8:17 PM
If I had the OED, I'd use it to build forts in my library. Carefully. I saw an old edition of the complete OED last spring at a used bookshop in Massachusetts. Oh how I wanted it. Off the charts. Blue Oxford cloth and creamy/white paper jackets. More soon on other mammoth and expensive sets I covet - thanks for your comments.
My dear brother gave me two books of poetry for Christmas. The new Billy Collins and the new Wendell Berry! An embarrassment of riches!He can buy me books any ol' day he chooses.
# posted by : 11:20 PM
: 11:20 PM
This is a brother to be cherished and pampered, indeed. Send him some forthcoming books cataglogues - the recent Beacon Press catalogue for example, which features Mary Oliver reading her own poetry on a cd. Publication date in March or April, I think. I can't wait.
Post a Comment
<< Home
