Toys are important to a child but too many of them can be a handicap. A child who has a chest full of ready-made playthings often becomes indifferent to them. Eventually none amuse or please and the toy-owner becomes restless, dissatisfied, and frequently difficult to live with. Such a child urgently needs a wholesome release … Continue reading Making+Doing=Being
Most book dealers state they take books in “good” condition. Some customers have an interesting definition of “good.” Many of these arguments on “why won’t you buy this hideous book?” end up with the customer arguing “but its a good book!” and telling you all about the wonderful story and how it moved them. This is all well and good, but when the book is missing both covers and smells of cat pee, you generally don’t want it, no matter what the contents are like. If it’s a truly rare manuscript entirely valuable for its writing, then perhaps you can learn to love the smell of urine… but it never is. How hard the person argues “but it’s a good book!” is inversely proportional to how valuable it is. The person with the coverless Danielle Steel that you can smell from six feet away is the one that wants to argue about value.
Sometimes you wonder how they missed just how awful it was. If they’ve clearly tossed all the loose books in a box and you find one the dog ate, that is understandable. Or one in the box has a warped cover from coffee. Everybody misses one or two. It’s the ones that bring you an entire box that appears to have had a nest of incontinent weasels in it that you wonder about. Why are they bringing it to you? Do they really think you’ll buy it?
The boxes that smell clearly of mildew are the most perplexing. I’m not super sensitive to mildew, but have had customers come in with boxes that made my eyes water and nose clog from six feet away. How the heck did they pick it up and carry it around without noticing? How did they drive over in a car without dying of respiratory failure?
But really, this is all a lead up to showing you a picture of an awful book. I’m unsure of the original source, it’s just been all over the internet recently. No explanation of where it was found. I have nightmares that this book will arrive at the store. “But it’s a good book! It’s The Good Book!”
Bible growing mushrooms
NO, I DON’T CARE HOW “GOOD” IT IS, IT’S GROWING MUSHROOMS!!!
I have personally had people bring in books covered in visible layers of mold “fur”, but never actual mushrooms. But I’m sure a mushroom covered book will show up one day…
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 12/20/2008
"You Never Know What You'll Find in a Book," Henry Alford's back-page essay in this weekend's New York Times Book Review, has me remembering this morning; those essays often do. Alford's piece is a roam—across the slice of bacon Reynolds Price once found tucked inside a library book, through the books-as-banks memories of the now-sober Sherman Alexie, and past book-stashed Q tips, notes to self, faux history, cash, even a baby's tooth (I understand that one, and then again I don't).
The essay took me back to the years I spent visiting an old book barn 30 minutes down the road. I went in search of anything Spanish Civil War esque, anything that might tell me more about a novel I kept endlessly rewriting. I'd come home with boxes of things, books inside which had been stashed recipes, memos, polaroids, objets d'art kept safe—for whom? I wondered, for what?
Later, I began to write a novel about the writer who had gone searching—not just for that war, but for herself. I never published that book either, but this morning, looking back over those pages, I found that writer who is still searching, who still loves the holy ground of books:
She was not afraid to stow the seashells in her pockets. Not afraid to chase the moon into the mountains. Not afraid to spend almost the whole of every Sunday in the book barn down the road, which she had fallen in love with for its dozens of stairs, its risers that went up and down, Escher-ized. She had loved the way the books were shelved in old peach crates and how the overturned crates were also chairs. How thick the floors were with splinters. How there was the smell of fruit mixed with the smell of history, and no sound except the sound of turning pages, the sound of an occasional bibliophile’s shoes or the call of Mr. Shipley, “Finding everything you need?” She had loved the room she had thought of as her own: the Spanish room. She had loved the Andrew Wyeth painting on the wall below, and the rocking chair and the old church pew and the gigantic books nobody purchased. She’d needed no one but herself at the book barn. Nothing but the stairs and the gardens of color she could see through the open windows —the reds and greens, the occasional starched yellow.
You inspired me to share my story. Here's the link: http://presentinglenore.blogspot.com/2008/12/who-is-that-naked-man.html
This book is on my "to read" list.
Once, in a 2nd hand bookshop, I found a five dollar bill inside a copy of On Fortune's Wheel, by Cynthia Voigt. A couple of people asked me, "Did you look in all the other books to see if there was money in them as well?" I didn't. It would have seemed like ingratitude.
Lenore, your story is remarkable!! (but so many of your stories are)
And Farida, well, people. People!!! (that's what I say)
In my head, your attic is full of crates of stories and musings. A treasure chest of words. :)