Now THAT’S a Library Sale!
July 30, 2005
Over 140,000 books and other items at one of the oldest and largest library sales in the country. Read about it here:
http://www.connpost.com/news/ci_2884214
Sounds like my kind of event!
Mary Jo
What Your Bookshelves Say About You
July 29, 2005
The first thing, naturally, when one enters a scholar’s study or library, is to look at his books. One gets a notion very speedily of his tastes and the range of his pursuits by a glance round his bookshelves.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Poet at the Breakfast-Table (1872)
I have noticed [...]
Substitute for Experience
July 28, 2005
The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.
~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Lecture, 1971
Collecting Books
July 28, 2005
Mama Squirrel commented:
What I collect? I blush to use the term…scrounge is more to the point, since collecting might imply that I am more knowledgeable than I am about things such as editions and conditions.
Not at all, my dear! Knowledge of editions and conditions is NOT necessary to be [...]
Breadth and Depth in a Home Library
July 27, 2005
A home library should have both breadth (books on a wide variety of topics) and depth (lots of books on a single topic).
Whatever topic piques my children’s curiosity, there is likely to be at least one book they can pull right off the shelf. As they develop passions for certain subjects, we try to [...]
Surround Your Children with Books!
July 27, 2005
No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading [...]
Does Analytical Reading Reduce the Mystery and Enjoyment?
July 27, 2005
In response to my recommendation of How to Read a Book, Maureen commented:
Just wondering, don’t you find that these analytical approaches take away some of the wonderful mystery and enjoyment? Or does approaching certain books in certain ways add to your enjoyment of the book? I guess I just like to [...]
The Security of Old Books
July 27, 2005
What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticized for us!
~ James Russell Lowell, “A Library of Old Authors,” My Study Windows (1871)
Books under the Christmas Tree
July 27, 2005
There are many people—happy people, it usually appears—whose thoughts at Christmas always turn to books. The notion of a Christmas tree with no books under it is repugnant and unnatural to them.
~ Robertson Davies, The Merry Heart (1997)
Thanks to Lisa B. for sharing this quote.
Books under the Christmas tree—and at every birthday—are part [...]
Lending Books
July 27, 2005
A friend told me recently that she loves to borrow my books because it’s interesting to see what I have marked in them. She especially loves my question marks in the margins!
One hazard of lending a marked book, however, is that if it is lost, you can (usually) replace the book, but [...]
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Mary Jo Tate
