Books? Yes, please.

Alright, so, I think you all know my love for books.  And maybe you've even gotten tired of my talking about it!  Don't worry - this isn't a long article about why I think you should read and what I think you should read.  This is just about an experience I had with books yesterday.

It was the Shaker Heights Library Book Sale.  Actually, it's continuing all weekend, but it started yesterday.  Our good friends the Clarkes traveled 2.5 hours to come to it.  I think we started going three years ago.  Anyway, it was marvelous.  All the people were stamped, and cramped up waiting in hallways in a huge line that did u-turns and twisty-doos.  They had their boxes, their crates, their bags.  Here I thought that it might be a nice quiet thing, with people musing over the book selections, thinking about what they wanted to get.  But I was quite wrong. The moment we were let in, people rushed to the different tables, and raced through everything, grabbing what they wanted... looking for the best.  Of course it was necessary for them to do that... if one person didn't do that, then they might not get anything worth while.  I passed by the Religion and Philosophy table, and would've stopped but there were a lot of people there, so I went straight to the Literature and Poetry.  (I went to the first-mentioned table later when everything died down.)   I got a fine little collection of books to add to my library.  Here's my list:

• Rebecca - Daphne de Maurier
• Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
• The Professor - Charlotte Bronte
• Five Great Dialogues - Plato
• The Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso) - Dante
• The Idiot - Fydor Dostoyevsky 
• The Brother's Karamazov - Fydor Dostoyevsky
• Crime and Punishment - Fydor Dostoyevsky
• The Iliad - Homer
• The Odyssey - Homer 
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo
• The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
• Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
• Lorna Doone - R.D. Blackmore

The Lorna Doone story is a fun one.  I read it two years ago.  Actually, I think I got my copy either from Half Price books, or this booksale.  It was kinda my prized book.  I forget what edition it was, but it had this fancy design on the spine, and was a faded light-teal kinda color.  It went inside a faded dessert rose colored case... I loved that book.  Well, after Peter (my brother) left for TX a long time ago... somewhere between then and now, he mentioned he didn't have Lorna Doone.  I proudly showed him my copy.  (Peter and I have always been book collectors, and he was always getting the nicest, oldest books... so I obviously got excited when I came into possession of one he didn't have.)  He said: "Oh! That's a nice one! I actually have several other books from that edition."  And in a moment of feeling sacrificial, I wrapped it up and gave it to him for Christmas or his birthday or something.  Well... Yesterday I found the exact same edition... except it has a neutral case, and the color of the book is vibrant teal.  It's in much nicer condition. .... haha. I told Peter last night, kinda laughingly, and he said: "Good! Now we can trade!" Book wars are fun. :)  But I was thankful that even in this small matter of a book, God gave back to me what I had given away. 

I wrote my name and the date in each of the books last night.  And I smiled too.  These books are a part of me now.... whether I like them, or not. :P