Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

Bookplates continue to find their way into my books.  Last night I was sitting in the book room long after dark, brush in hand, working my way through most of the books on two shelves.  Funny, some books seem to call out for bookplates and others seem to have no interest in them whatsoever - they are complete as they are and ask for no additions and indeed definitely do not want any, even when offered politely.  Sometimes the book's design simply leaves no room for anything extra, as I mentioned before, but more often than not it is a definite feeling.  Most interesting, and even a bit eerie.

Another striking thing I've realized as I do this: some books have been with me for so long.  We have been traveling companions through life, for decades and decades.  The very first book I put a bookplate in was a gift to me from my stepfather, given when I was five years old.  He inscribed it to me.  It is a book I absolutely love and re-read from time to time.  Ryan had never come across it, so this winter we read it aloud one evening, after I found a nice hardcover reprint to give to one of my nephews for his birthday, as he himself turned five.  I inscribed it to him.  What is the book?  The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame, illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard (the story was originally a chapter in Grahame's Dream Days from 1898, then Shepard illustrated it as a stand-alone book in 1938).  My old copy is a reprint.  It's a bit shabby after all this time, but I do love it so.  A great story about a book-loving boy and the peaceful dragon he befriends.  Saint George comes to town and the boy, the dragon, and the saint conspire to set up a mock-joust so the villagers will have a spectacle, without anyone being hurt or actually fighting.  A few of my other favorite children's books run along a similar theme - that of a big powerful creature purposefully choosing peace - The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf, illustrated by Robert Lawson (Viking 1936, I have a later reprint), and Tiger Flower by Robert Vavra, illustrated by Fleur Cowles (Reynal 1969).  Wonderful stories to visit and visit again.

But back to bookplates - the second book I put a bookplate in was volume one of a two-volume set that already had someone else's bookplate inside.  So I tipped mine inside the back cover.  It is the Loeb Classical Library Virgil, containing the Eclogues, Georgics, and all of the Aeneid, translated by H. Rushton Fairclough (Harvard University Press 1935, and still in print!).  This copy was given to my grandfather, when he won his school's Latin Prize.  How do I know this?  The bookplate that was already inside the front cover says so, and has his name written neatly on it.  This is what I mean by books being our companions throughout our lives.  I am finding books like this, both from my family and books I bought myself, in high school and college in the 1980s, not to mention the many books I bought or was given as reading copies at my first bookstore job in the 1990s.  I remember these books when they were brand new, fresh from the press!  Now here they are, showing signs of age.  Pages discoloring, foxing, general wear and tear.  In other words, a lot like me, by this time in life, showing my age in no uncertain terms.

My grandfather's prize set is a wonderful keepsake, since I don't have many physical artefacts from his branch of the family, and he died a few years ago, after a very long and vibrant life.  What else will I find, as I go through my books?  By now, I have worked my way through many of my art books.  Amongst them I came across a gift from my biological father, with his flowing pen inscription taking up most of the front free endpaper, and written in words that bring his distinctive voice clearly to mind, even though he too has been gone for a few years now.  I also found a few art books I bought for myself when I first began to paint seriously, beyond just student work.  And the many many books since then, as I've continued to paint and seek out narratives written by artists, to help me along in my chosen profession.  And let's not even talk about my books-about-books yet, okay?  My other profession.  Another day, more books.  This late cold spring has benefitted the whole bookplate project in general, since I don't yet want to be outside much.  I'm doing a stack or two of books every two days or so, working in small bursts, and that pace feels ideal.

Reading, too.  I didn't really have a winter reading project this year.  But.  My interest in the British countryside continues and nearly all of my recent reading reflects that, so along with the bookplates themselves (engraved and printed in Cambridgeshire), perhaps that actually was my winter reading project.  And it continues into spring: 


A peek at my recent to-be-read pile.  We have been reading aloud again, bits of The Oldest Road: An Exploration of the Ridgeway by J.R.L. Anderson and Fay Godwin (Wildwood House 1979), and I am well into The Journal of Beatrix Potter from 1881 to 1897 (Warne 1966) and The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald (New Directions 1998).  I've read bits of poetry from Sebald's Across the Land and Water: Selected Poems, 1964-2001 (Random House 2011).  And have finished Waterlog: A Swimmer's Journey through Britain by Roger Deakin (Vintage 2000).  I must say this has been an ideal t-b-r pile and I am loath to break it up!  Waterlog was a joy from start to finish, on the heels of reading Deakin's Notes from Walnut Tree Farm (via Ronald Blythe) many weeks back.  With Waterlog, Deakin launched a wild swimming movement in the U.K. and beyond, and I can see why, because his writing is sublime and the reader wants to experience what he has described so well.  Nature.  Being truly engulfed in it, and part of it, in ways we have so often forgotten to be.  A taste - his visit to swim on and around the island of Belnahua, in Scotland (p.238):

"The beaches were all silver, black and grey, with fine black sand and all denominations of the island's slate coinage, some flecked with a starry night sky of fool's gold, others striated with the finest random white pencil lines of quartz, the doodling of mermaids.  The tides had sorted and screened them by size, stacking them like books end-on in flowing lines and whorls that traced the eddies and turbulence that clamoured over them."

All of these books are highly quotable.  Please indulge me in another, since it reminds me so much of my beloved peaceful creatures, mentioned above, and the odd, old tug of what we held in our hands when we were young.  From the Sebald poetry collection (pp.81-82), the first and last stanzas of his poem A Peaceable Kingdom:

"Like an early geographer
 I paint a lion or two
 or some other wild animal
 in my white memory fields
 ...

 Is it enough
 to be overcome
 by feeling
 at a few words
 in our children's
 school primer

 Are these the emblems
 of our love"

This question doesn't need to be answered but my heart can't help but say YES to it anyway.  The white memory fields of blank book pages and of empty canvases, waiting to be filled.  Oh dear.  I really didn't intend to write this much today, about so many things all at once.  I keep thinking I need to return to mentioning just one book at a time, here (...but did I ever actually do that?? hmmm, I have to wonder...), but I always seem to get carried away lately, and the books pile up.  As they do.  Perhaps in my next few posts I will in fact do something I've only thought about doing for quite some time - tell the story of just one book from my shelves.  One book at a time, for a change.  I am coming across many contenders as I work my way along, bookplates neatly stacked on the table beside me.  They seem to interleave into the books like pressed flowers or four-leaf clovers.  Lucky, lucky me, I often think, in the quiet of the evenings.