Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

Remember the writing-about-one-book-at-a-time thing I was considering recently?  I am still considering doing so.  But today isn't that day, because here I am wanting to clean up the big stack of books next to me and tidy them away in the book room, but I can't seem to do so until I mention them here first.  And discuss a few in detail.  With pictures.  I am still putting bookplates into my books (and will be for quite some time), and also attended a most excellent little library book sale last week.  So, some new stuff to delve into.  The book sale haul first.  I bought five bags of books for about $85, and after sorting them all out, cleaning, coding, and pricing most of them, these are what is left over for me to investigate before taking any other drastic action:


A few of these I want to read, a few I want to own for keeps, a few I just want to browse through before attempting to sell, one I want to give away as a gift, and one I will destroy in the process of turning some of its pages into a collage.  I used to do a lot of that, before painting became ascendant in my art-life.  Long story for another day.  Today - these books.  I won't name them all, but the keepers include the short humorous novel by J. Trevor Story, The Trouble with Harry (Macmillan 1950), a first edition, interesting to me because I always liked the film Alfred Hitchcock made from the book.  But I didn't know it was a book until I saw it at the sale!  Maybe I will give it a try, since it looks Thurberesque and highly readable, and one of the characters is a painter.  Other keepers include a softcover reprint of something actually Thurberesque, Thurber's The 13 Clocks (Penguin 2008) with an introduction by Neil Gaiman, then the John Dos Passos collection - "articles and scraps of narrative" says the printed note inside - In All Countries (Harcourt, Brace 1934, second printing), and Paul Auster's novel In the Country of Last Things (Viking 1987, a really nice first edition in a near fine jacket).  Also, a reprint of The Life of Poetry by Muriel Rukeyser (Paris Press 1996), inside the front cover of which is a note written in faint pencil, thus:

   "I am the poet
    of small graces..."

Indeed.  Will keep, will read, and will take to heart.  Sometimes what is written inside books is so quietly stunning and mysterious.  Such as.  I blinked and I may have even gasped when I opened up one of the Richard Russo hardcovers, and saw this:


What do I do with that?  I didn't even know it was signed when I bought it for two bucks.  Much less inscribed to some other Sarah, who cast it aside so that I might pick it up.  I see that one of the main characters is also named Sarah, and another main character is a painter in Venice.  Suppose I'd better read this book...!  After I finish another book from this photo, which I have already begun: The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane (Viking 2012) and which is utterly fantastic so far, the kind of book you wish you had the ability and experience to be able to write yourself.  Full report on that one whenever I finish it.

By the way, the other Richard Russo hardcover in the photo is also signed, although not to anyone in particular, as is the Terry Tempest Williams book.  As I said, that was a really fine little book sale!  Still basking in its glow, over a week later.

Enough books for now?  No?  A few more then, from my own shelves.  One I struggled with, regarding the questions of:  Should really I put my bookplate in this thing, and if so, where?


Somewhat shabby, it's true, but still a lovely old copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (Rees Welsh & Co 1882).  I offered this for sale some years back then decided to keep it for my very own.  So, yes to a bookplate.  But where?  I mean, you open the front cover and there's a veritable circus already underway in there:


We have a publisher's ad tipped in along the gutter, the name of a previous owner, a stamp from another owner, a bookseller's code, and another bookseller's ticket!  What to do.  The next page is blank except for my own tiny pencil price, now no longer relevant, but I leave it there for old times' sake.  So, inside the back cover we go instead, and yes, there is room there.  I chose the pastedown, just opposite another piece of ephemera from the publisher, which is laid in, loose, and pleads with us to sell Rees Welsh & Co. our fine libraries and book collections:


I think my hand trembled a bit when I added my bookplate to this jumble.  WHEW.  This can be nerve-wracking!  I have another copy of Leaves of Grass, a later reading copy (Small, Maynard & Company 1897) bound in green buckram, which also now carries my bookplate.  I feel stealthy and greedy with two interesting copies of this beloved text, but it is such a good feeling, I must say, so I am going with it.  But back to the 1882 printing, in the olive cloth, for a moment - the title page lifts my heart whenever I gaze at it, so here it is:


The text is lovely too.  A sample, with the beginning of one of my favorite poems in the whole book, On the Beach at Night, which never fails to prickle my skin:


One more book?  How about that large blue hardcover I used to keep the olive Leaves of Grass open, to show the spine and front cover in the photo above?  Okay, here it is.  I am still working my way through the poetry books, but am finished with those now, except for some strays here and there, and some anthologies.  Carl Sandburg was in the Ss.


Another fairly shabby copy, without even a dust jacket to his name - Complete Poems (Harcourt, Brace 1950).  Still, I love him.  I put my bookplate inside the front cover, across from a previous owner's ink signature and flourish, and the first edition notation and the pencilled price I bought the book at, from the seller's bookshop, I guess around fifteen years ago, maybe longer:


It was priced at $15.  A bit high for this copy, even then, but I bought it anyway.  Because the bookseller in question hadn't taken the time to flip one more page in, to see this other ink signature.  Unmistakable, his handwriting, written with a generously fat-nibbed fountain pen:


That was a good day, I remember it well!  I already owned a copy of this book, but not a signed copy!  I stood at the counter in the shop and said as much to the proprietor, and he laughed and sold me the book, bless him.  At one point in my life I loved Sandburg's short work so much that I set some of his poems into type myself, and printed little broadsides, with my own illustrations.  Not to sell, just to make for my own.  A big part of book-love for me is wrapped up in that tactile feeling of paper and metal type, not to mention what a fresh page looks like after you roll the drum of the press by hand over type you have set yourself, and then lift the paper carefully away and set it aside to dry.  Oh it is quite a feeling indeed and I'm glad I know it well.

Back to the shelves now with all of these books and more - enough for today!