Covers

This week's Booking Through Thursday is:

Hardcovers or paperbacks?

Honestly, I prefer paperbacks. With modern books hardbacks are usually more expensive, bigger and heavier, which just has the effect of making them more difficult to read from a practical standpoint.

I do love the proper bound covers on antique books, however, especially if they're real embossed leather with the gold leaf intact - they're just beautiful.

Weeding

This week's Booking Through Thursday is:

Do you ever weed out unwanted books from your library? And if so, what do you do with them?


Anyone who's ever seen the state of my room would assume that I never get rid of a book, ever, but actually I do have a system (although it's a system that means I do keep most of my books...)

I'll always hang on to a book if I enjoyed it enough to consider recommending it to a friend or to take pleasure from seeing it on my shelves, and I'll also hang on to it if it's older than 70 years or so, or rare and out of print. Oh, or if it's part of a series that I have yet to finish reading.

So that basically leaves one-off novels I didn't enjoy very much that were printed after about 1960 - or duplicates, if I've somehow ended up with two copies and one or more of them is newish. I have two copies of a couple of 1800s poetry collections but they're both so beautiful that I really can't bring myself to let them out into the wild.

In the area I live in, leaving something on the wall outside your house means that it's free for anyone walking past to take - it's great, sometimes you'll find a t-shirt or a chair and get to just take it home on the spur of the moment. On may way home from work today I actually found a bedside table that just needs a clean out of the drawer and it'll be perfectly fine. Once I've finished reading a book, if I decide I don't want to keep it I'll put it on the wall outside, and wait for someone else to take it (and pray it doesn't rain, I feel terrible leaving even bad books in the rain!)

Christmas presents

This week's Booking Through Thursday is:

Did you get any great books for holiday gifts this year? Have you read them yet?
If not, were there any you hoped you would get?

Well, I'm glad you asked, Booking Through Thursday, because I got some lovely books this Christmas.

I've already mentioned the French novels my brother got me as combination birthday and Christmas present, but for Christmas I also got Cats' Miscellany by Lesley O'Hara, C J Sansom's latest Shardlake novel, Lamentation (in a beautiful embossed-effect hardback), and a 1913 edition of Stories from Shakespeare, retold for children by Thomas Carter. It's still in great condition and has some lovely illustrations inside.

How about yourselves? Any good books (or good other things, for that matter) this Christmas?

Wordsworth's Poetical Works

Surprise bonus post!

I’ve posted a couple of poems out of my lovely antique Wordsworth before – but now I’ve finally finished it. It’s taken about 9 months to work my way through it, so it’s kind of a relief to have it out of the way now.

Many of his shorter poems are beautiful and pensive, or stirring with action and violence, but a lot of them, especially the longer ones, were harder to get through. I pride myself on never quitting once I start reading something, but even I couldn’t force myself to finish The Excursion, a 181-page blank verse epic consisting (judging from the first 30 pages or so) of the narrator wandering around the hills chatting to random people he meets and admiring the landscape.

It is a beautiful edition, and pretty old – there’s an inscription at the front dated 1867. Just holding a book that old feels wonderful, and it’s in great condition too considering it’s ex libris. Makes you think not that many people must have wanted to borrow it! Most of the gold leaf on the cover and outer pages remains, and the wonderful smooth leather feels amazing to hold. I wish people put as much effort into bookbinding as they did in those days. A book was forever, not just a throwaway read for the summer holidays, to be left on the train on the way home.

Latest loot!

I found one of those wire bathroom shelf things yesterday, which I'm going to attempt to turn into a bookshelf later. As this will mean more book space, when I noticed a charity shop having a closing down sale I just couldn't resist getting some more books to fill it. My loot for today (for the extortionate total of £1.50) is as follows: 

- Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
- We'll Meet Again by Mary Higgins Clark (her novel that I've already read was called I'll be Seeing You - now I'm wondering if all of them are named along the lines of 'goodbye' phrases)
- Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe - this is a 1920s (ish) edition and matches my set of 16 Odham's Press 1920s Dickens, so that was an exciting find.
- On Beauty by Zadie Smith
- Joseph by Julian Rathbone
- The Witching Hour by Anne Rice

All for 25p each, which is pretty good value per page there. The shop owner said that they'll be rotating stock and that there should be different stuff in next week, so I, um, will be completely avoiding it. Except that I have to walk past it twice a day to get to and from work... So I may be filling up my new bookshop rather sooner than planned.

Sonnet - William Wordsworth

I'm working my way through Wordsworth's Poetical Works at the moment (1867 edition, or possibly earlier - definitely the oldest in my collection so far), and came across a sonnet, entitled simply 'Written in London, September, 1802'. Sorry about the poor quality of the image, my camera phone doesn't like taking pictures in focus of anything less than a couple of metres away. The text on the inside cover reads: "A birthday gift from Mrs Pearson, Febry 7th 1867". It was in the library of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, until presumably being sold ex libris at some point, and then was discovered in a second-hand bookshop by me a couple of years ago.

I was struck by how relevant the sentiment of this sonnet is today - this is essentially a complaint about materialism and celebrity culture ruining the standards of life, written more than 200 years ago.

O Friend! I know not which way I must look
For comfort, being, as I am, oppress'd
To think that now our life is only dress'd
For show: mean handiwork of craftsman, cook,
Or groom! We must run glittering like a brook
In the open sunshine, or we are unblest:
The wealthiest man among us is the best:
No grandeur now, in Nature or in book,
Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense,
This is idolatry; and these we adore:
Plain living and high thinking are no more:
The homely beauty of the good old cause
Is gone, our peace, our fearful innocence,
And pure religion breathing household laws.