What Are You Reading

[AmateisGal]

Back from the dump with an armload of nineteenth and early-twentieth-century books deposited, apparently, by the heirs of someone who took very good care of their volumes. Quite a few books on nature, science, religion, and international affairs.

The one I'm looking at now is "Woman and her Diseases," by Edward H. Dixon, MD, the 1860 printing of a work first published in 1855. It was one of the most popular of the semi-scientific works focusing on "female issues," and while some of the basic medical information is interesting, considering what was known at the time, the chapter on "Hysteria," is, if you'll pardon the expression, quite hysterical.

I'm usually pretty forgiving in books like this, "context of the time" and all that, but this one's a real pip. "Well-directed and good-natured ridicule, from a person from whom she cannot escape, as a relative inhabiting the same house, is the best means of overcoming this morbid state."

Yessir, Mister Victorian Doctor, M. D., sir. You come right over here and try that. Come riiiiiiiiight overrrrrrrrr here.

OHHHH. I can't believe what some people throw away. Just blows my mind. Thank you for rescuing them!

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Just picked this up at Barnes & Noble last night.

 

[LizzieMaine]

OHHHH. I can't believe what some people throw away. Just blows my mind. Thank you for rescuing them!

I have long been bothered by the image of something similar happening to my books when I croak. I've specified in my will that they'll go to one of the kids from work who's also a librarian, and hopefully by then she'll be living someplace with room for them all. If not, look for a vast collection of radioana, thirties agitprop, protofeminism, labor poetry, baseball, fringe religion, and Ellery Queen mysteries to show up on Ebay.

 

[Fading Fast]

OHHHH. I can't believe what some people throw away. Just blows my mind. Thank you for rescuing them!

+1. Wonderful rescue.

 

[MisterCairo]

David Copperfield.

 

[greatestescaper]

The candlelight is brighter than you might think. And not necessarily a habit, more of a novelty, and for setting the mood for that great eerie work. Not that Stoker needed help in being spooky.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

OHHHH. I can't believe what some people throw away. Just blows my mind. Thank you for rescuing them!

Unfortunately the reason why a lot of stuff gets thrown away is because, for the family, it's much easier than going through the hassle of having an estate sale or even putting it on eBay. And nowadays even some thrift stores are becoming very picky about what they accept.

 

[DNO]

Thirty years ago, I was hanging around a friend's shop when this well-dressed lady walked in holding a shopping bag. "I'd like to sell this helmet. It was my father's and he used to tell us that he wore it at Passchendaele."

Every time I see something like this I shudder. Some folks just don't seem to have a sense of history or heritage. On the other hand, it is always good fortune for people like me. That Brodie helmet is presently resting upstairs in my spare room. I know who wore it and where it's been...I wouldn't sell it for anything. So at least it ended up in the hands of someone who can appreciate it.

In the same way, I have obtained the uniform of a Canadian fighter pilot in the RFC who was shot down and held prisoner of war throughout 1918 (that was brought in by the owner's daughter). I've even picked up a Waterloo medal to the 95th rifles this way ("This has been in my family for ages and I have no use for it"). Like I said, I really don't understand people who dispose of treasures like this.

 

[DNO]

A local Value Village had a sale of 50% off their books today. I bought a pile of books, mainly by authors I've never read before. I'll dig into the pile soon.

Right now I'm reading Simon Murray's account of his five years in the French Foreign Legion in the early '60s, called, simply, Legionnaire.

 

[greatestescaper]

Thirty years ago, I was hanging around a friend's shop when this well-dressed lady walked in holding a shopping bag. "I'd like to sell this helmet. It was my father's and he used to tell us that he wore it at Passchendaele."

Every time I see something like this I shudder. Some folks just don't seem to have a sense of history or heritage. On the other hand, it is always good fortune for people like me. That Brodie helmet is presently resting upstairs in my spare room. I know who wore it and where it's been...I wouldn't sell it for anything. So at least it ended up in the hands of someone who can appreciate it.

In the same way, I have obtained the uniform of a Canadian fighter pilot in the RFC who was shot down and held prisoner of war throughout 1918 (that was brought in by the owner's daughter). I've even picked up a Waterloo medal to the 95th rifles this way ("This has been in my family for ages and I have no use for it"). Like I said, I really don't understand people who dispose of treasures like this.

I reckon it really is bitter sweet, an occasion like that? There are so many people who have no concept of history at all, but, as you said, it is fortunate for those of us that do. I rescued a Remington Typewriter from about 1915, from a local estate sale.

 

[Harp]

Irwin Silber's Press Box Red, The Story of Lester Rodney, The Communist Who Helped Break The Color Line in American Sports

Journalism at its finest:eusa_clap

 

[LizzieMaine]

Excellent book. For an interesting companion piece into what was happening within the CPUSA during those years, take a look at John Gates' "The Story Of An American Communist." Gates was one of Rodney's colleagues on the Worker, and a close personal friend.

 

[Harp]

...take a look at John Gates' "The Story Of An American Communist."
Gates was one of Rodney's colleagues on the Worker, and a close personal friend.

Rodney's solid approach to sports and social justice issues is all the more impressive today.
Will look at Gates' memoir after I have finished Whittaker Chambers' remarkable Witness.

...A detour to Paris and the late James Salter's entendre A Sport and a Pastime.
Salter was an interesting ba***rd and more gifted than Hemingway though less known a talent.

 

[ChiTownScion]

The Floor Work Instruction Manual of my Masonic Grand Lodge. At times I am fully aware that the obsessive devotion to this sort of minutia surpasses the ridiculous and the inane to the outsider... but it is important that when we put on the degrees for our candidates that they be done right. I am hoping that in my own small way I might impart the same inspiration to other men that was found in all of this by the likes of Mozart, Haydn, Goethe, and Washington.

 

[Tiki Tom]

I have long been bothered by the image of something similar happening to my books when I croak. I've specified in my will that they'll go to one of the kids from work who's also a librarian, and hopefully by then she'll be living someplace with room for them all. If not, look for a vast collection of radioana, thirties agitprop, protofeminism, labor poetry, baseball, fringe religion, and Ellery Queen mysteries to show up on Ebay.

I loved Ellery Queen! I too, cannot pass up second-hand book stores, garage sales w/ books, etc. I'm running out of space for all the resulting odds and ends and masterpieces.

 

[Harp]

David Halberstam's The Reckoning

Published in 1986 and still relevant, Halberstam's analysis of Ford and Nissan offers an excellent study of corporate/national myopia.

 

[Big J]

War and Peace.

 

[tropicalbob]

War and Peace.

I just read that last summer. You always hear of what a LONG book it is, but it's so well done you sort of sink into it and hate to put it down. The battle scenes are particularly riveting.

 

[tropicalbob]

I've just begun Michel Houellebecq's new novel, Submission, in the English translation. It is, as they say, "controversial," which means, as Wilde pointed out, that the work is alive and vital. I'm only about fifty pages into it, so perhaps I'll report back when I've finished. I have a long, boring meeting tomorrow, so the book will be coming along.

 

[greatestescaper]

I'm just finishing the last of Mary Stewart's Arthurian Saga, "The Wicked Day." One of my favorite tellings of Merlin, Arthur, and the rise of Camelot.