I love books. I’ve always loved reading, a gift from my mother’s (Irish) side of the family. Some of my earliest memories are of my mother reading to me or her father telling me stories. To be honest, I suppose what I really love are stories and books represent stories to me the way the aroma of coffee and bacon represent breakfast to someone who wakes up hungry.
My dad, German and practical, appreciates my love of reading but has never understood why I don’t just take books from the library, instead of acquiring them myself. (I do use and love libraries; I support our local library, which gets me access to the opening night of the library’s annual book sale, allowing me to buy more books). I’ll admit being at a loss for an adequate explanation for wanting to own, rather than just read, books. I think my dad and I have both come to accept it as one of those gaps in understanding which occur between fathers and sons. (I’ll never understand his fascination with using sticks to chase a little white ball through a pasture on a regular basis. So be it.)
A combination of German thrift, relative penury and a footloose lifestyle kept my bookish habits in check for four decades, then e-books began to emerge, leading to a glut of cheap, used, dead-tree editions for sale. Online vendors of used books put almost any volume I could imagine just a keyboard away. I resisted the online thing for several years, preferring to keep a list of desired tomes in my pocket and hunting them down in used books stores. There are few more enjoyable ways for me to spend an hour than by wandering through the stacks, inhaling the must of dried paper and hunting treasures.
My friend Charlie is a bibliomanic. (I’m a mere bibliophile, the difference being an order of magnitude. I probably have 2,000 books; Charlie has 20,000.) Charlie was the pusher who introduced me to online, used-book buying, showing me how cheap and immediate gratification could be.
It was Charlie who took me from the “buy a book, read a book” stage to “buy ten books, get around to reading them in the next year or so, maybe” stage, which I hasten to add, I do not practice on line, but Charlie’s dragged me through dozens of used books stores in at least three time zones and then made me carry bags and bags of his books through airport security lines. I was bound to accumulate a few extra copies here and there.
All of which is to say that last spring I happened on several volumes of Russian and Irish literature in a local used bookstore and bought them all. I started on the Russians (Gogol and Chekov) immediately, as I feel like my education lacks in that department, but last week I started on a 1959 Bantam Classic edition of “The Finest Stories of Sean O’Faolain.” I’d never read any of Mr. O’Faolain’s work, but I loved the volume as soon as I spotted it. It’s a small paperback, the kind they used to sell in drug stores. It’s surprisingly well made, with the pages supple after 53 years. The price on the binding is 50 cents, but there’s also an old sticker on the cover, inked over, but the ink faded enough to show it says “4/6d.” This tells me that at some point, the book was sold in Ireland or the UK for four shillings and sixpence. This must have occurred before 1971, which is when both Ireland and the UK abandoned shillings and pence for decimalization (or 100 pence to the pound).
So we have a book which was at least printed in the US, shipped across the Atlantic, bought and read there, then somehow made its way back to the US where someone, sometime, wrote “1.75” in pencil at the upper right corner of the first page. I suppose someone bought the book at that price, read it and resold it, allowing me to purchase it for $2.95. (The used book seller’s gotta eat too, right?) I left all the prices intact as marks of provenance. Not only are the stories in the book enchanting, but the book has its own life (a bit longer than mine) and its own story to tell.
As it transpires, Mr. O’Faolain was born in County Cork, Ireland, where my story-loving grandfather was from. He was 14 months my granddad’s junior and they both belonged to the IRA and fought in the same region of Cork, taking the same side in the rebellion and the Irish Civil War. They may have known each other or at least known of each other. All these years after I heard my first stories, I’m now reading another version of the same tales. The circle seems complete.
Judging By the Cover
I love books. I’ve always loved reading, a gift from my mother’s (Irish) side of the family. Some of my earliest memories are of my mother reading to me or her father telling me stories. To be honest, I suppose what I really love are stories and books represent stories to me the way the aroma of coffee and bacon represent breakfast to someone who wakes up hungry.
My dad, German and practical, appreciates my love of reading but has never understood why I don’t just take books from the library, instead of acquiring them myself. (I do use and love libraries; I support our local library, which gets me access to the opening night of the library’s annual book sale, allowing me to buy more books). I’ll admit being at a loss for an adequate explanation for wanting to own, rather than just read, books. I think my dad and I have both come to accept it as one of those gaps in understanding which occur between fathers and sons. (I’ll never understand his fascination with using sticks to chase a little white ball through a pasture on a regular basis. So be it.)
A combination of German thrift, relative penury and a footloose lifestyle kept my bookish habits in check for four decades, then e-books began to emerge, leading to a glut of cheap, used, dead-tree editions for sale. Online vendors of used books put almost any volume I could imagine just a keyboard away. I resisted the online thing for several years, preferring to keep a list of desired tomes in my pocket and hunting them down in used books stores. There are few more enjoyable ways for me to spend an hour than by wandering through the stacks, inhaling the must of dried paper and hunting treasures.
My friend Charlie is a bibliomanic. (I’m a mere bibliophile, the difference being an order of magnitude. I probably have 2,000 books; Charlie has 20,000.) Charlie was the pusher who introduced me to online, used-book buying, showing me how cheap and immediate gratification could be.
It was Charlie who took me from the “buy a book, read a book” stage to “buy ten books, get around to reading them in the next year or so, maybe” stage, which I hasten to add, I do not practice on line, but Charlie’s dragged me through dozens of used books stores in at least three time zones and then made me carry bags and bags of his books through airport security lines. I was bound to accumulate a few extra copies here and there.
All of which is to say that last spring I happened on several volumes of Russian and Irish literature in a local used bookstore and bought them all. I started on the Russians (Gogol and Chekov) immediately, as I feel like my education lacks in that department, but last week I started on a 1959 Bantam Classic edition of “The Finest Stories of Sean O’Faolain.” I’d never read any of Mr. O’Faolain’s work, but I loved the volume as soon as I spotted it. It’s a small paperback, the kind they used to sell in drug stores. It’s surprisingly well made, with the pages supple after 53 years. The price on the binding is 50 cents, but there’s also an old sticker on the cover, inked over, but the ink faded enough to show it says “4/6d.” This tells me that at some point, the book was sold in Ireland or the UK for four shillings and sixpence. This must have occurred before 1971, which is when both Ireland and the UK abandoned shillings and pence for decimalization (or 100 pence to the pound).
So we have a book which was at least printed in the US, shipped across the Atlantic, bought and read there, then somehow made its way back to the US where someone, sometime, wrote “1.75” in pencil at the upper right corner of the first page. I suppose someone bought the book at that price, read it and resold it, allowing me to purchase it for $2.95. (The used book seller’s gotta eat too, right?) I left all the prices intact as marks of provenance. Not only are the stories in the book enchanting, but the book has its own life (a bit longer than mine) and its own story to tell.
As it transpires, Mr. O’Faolain was born in County Cork, Ireland, where my story-loving grandfather was from. He was 14 months my granddad’s junior and they both belonged to the IRA and fought in the same region of Cork, taking the same side in the rebellion and the Irish Civil War. They may have known each other or at least known of each other. All these years after I heard my first stories, I’m now reading another version of the same tales. The circle seems complete.
© Mark Floegel, 2012