Book Nerd

12-14-13

Yesterday at work I was called the "book nerd" by my supervisor because I was gushing about a book I bought on Monday at the Dawn Treader Book Shop (a shop which I mentioned only a few posts ago). I thought it was a rather silly thing to say, considering I've been working the stacks of a library, but apparently not everyone who works there is a bibliophile. One of them explicitly told me that he hates books, but I can never tell when that guy is being serious, so who knows.

This time I bought a book by Ray Bradbury and a copy of Second April, one of the books of poetry published by Edna St. Vincent Millay. She's one of the Modernist poets I actually enjoy. Why, I'm not sure, but her poetry has a strong voice and good rhymes and are surprising.

Anyway, why was I gushing? The copy I bought is from 1921, which is the year that book was published. Its cover has texture, and the binding is relatively strong. I mean, it's starting to disconnect, but seriously, the book is from 1921 and I got it from a secondhand bookstore.

My 1921 copy of Second April

But that's not even the most exciting part. No, right inside, underneath the penciled price from the current shop, is an inscription written in what looks like permanent marker.

Here's the inscription, but you can't really read it because it's backward.

Since it's backward (thanks Photo Booth) and hard to read anyway, here's what I deciphered: 

'[J?]oyce to D.orothy 

Sept. 8, 1925

"Her twenty-third

-consecutive birthday"'

This book was originally a birthday present. I think that's pretty neat, to feel somehow connected to previous readers and to feel connected to history in general. I mean, Millay was considered rather scandalous, you know. Go read the Wikipedia article if you doubt me. And they were reading this while she was still writing. That's really cool.

BUT THAT IS NOT THE REASON I WAS GUSHING. No, I love the paper the poems are printed on. No joke. It was handmade. You can still see the lines from where the paper dried on a rack, the edges aren't as even as machine-made pages. It is a work of art.

If you click on the picture, you might see the lines too.

I see it now whenever I look at a page, just because I'm aware of it now. (If the picture doesn't work, just trust me on this. I can see the lines in the picture, but I also know what I'm looking for/at.) 

I would never have noticed that about the pages if I hadn't taken my preservation class this semester. Good class. If that makes me a book nerd, so be it.

You May Have Seen This Already...

but I don't care because it is beautiful. Also, now I'm going to talk more about it.

This is the 1886 copy of Tennyson's poems that I purchased last Thursday at Dawn Treader Book Shop, which is basically a book nerd's dream come true for finding secondhand (or thirdhand or whatever) books. Seriously, the first time I stepped in there I was afraid I was going to get lost. The shop is actually a bit bigger on the inside. Well, longer than it looks, and so it's deceptively smaller on the outside. Books everywhere, filling the shelves, lining the floor, that sort of thing. Sort of how I imagine Flourish and Blotts to look like.

Anyway, it was my second time in the shop, and this book spoke to me. Almost literally. It said, "Ashlee, if you do not buy me, I will disappear forever. I only cost $9.50 and I am gorgeous." And it is. The cover's a bit dirty and the edges a bit worn, but it was probably fantastic when it was first published. Inside there's pictures of Tennyson and the characters from his poems, and it has everything except what was published in the last six years of Tennyson's life because this was published six years before he died.

This book used to be in a library somewhere (specifically, the "Mt. Hope Library"), because it's still got its pocket and card attached to the backflap. Also, the title of the library neatly written in impeccable cursive above said pocket. Doesn't look like anyone ever checked the book out, though. (Boy, I know how that feels.)

Still, now it's got a new home with me, where, since my shelves aren't the best at present, I'm storing it on its spine because that's better than storing it on its fore-edge. My books deserve the best, especially now that I feel all guilty due to the preservation classes I've been taking.

P.S. I also purchased a copy of the Faerie Queene, which is exciting, but it's a more recently published paperback copy, which isn't as exciting as an 1886 copy of Tennyson. It just isn't.

Old Things

2-14-10

I like old things. I like tracing my family's genealogy, I enjoy archaeology and the findings that ensue (which is one reason that I wish I would be going on the dig this summer, but I'll be enjoying camp instead), I like studying history and finding how it applies to life today, and I like old books.

Yes, I said. I like old books. Sometimes, the older the better. Now, some of it I do find dreadfully dull, but I found delight in Paradise Lost and in Pride and Prejudice. Dickens has a dry wit that I find amusing; Melville, though long-winded, still has something to say that speaks to this day. Byron had a horrible life (to which he admitted), but he sure wrote some great poetry. Chaucer created the way of rhyming in English, and Shakespeare understood (or at least wondered about) how humans think and then wrote about it in iambic pentameter (mostly). T.S. Eliot has wonderful imagery, even if I'm not always sure what he's getting at (and even if sometimes I get annoyed at Prufrock for not living his life and instead measuring it out in coffee spoons).

Just because something is old does not mean that it does not have worth. Old beliefs (which may or may not have validity, I'm not commenting on that) still shaped the societies they were believed in, and I think an understanding of the past is crucial to understanding the future. It's one reason why I like the speculative fiction works of Orson Scott Card. He takes the past and weaves it into a narrative of the future, all the while commenting on the present. The original Star Trek series did that, too. Just because something (a belief, an idea, a way of life) is old does not mean it is irrelevant. Just because something is old does not mean that modern society must be hostile to it.

To be completely honest, I find that most of the modern writing I have read to be painfully boring and difficult to read. Not all of it, and some of it is quite great writing and deserves to be studied. It's just not my favorite. So, I'm not claiming that everything in the past was the best--far from it--but I'm also not saying that modern stuff sucks. I'm just stating that I think that old stuff is not irrelevant to today.

For why should I read about what I know life currently to be, when I can read about how it was, or how someone thinks it may be? I find the existential ponderings in many writings to be overly whiny, and I get frustrated with how the characters think and act. If there's no point to a person's life, why don't they go find a point? Stop sitting around and actually do something. Stop measuring life in coffee spoons and actually start living.

I would rather believe in a fantasy than exist in nothingness (and I think that a majority of people would agree with me; look at how popular speculative fiction and fantasy books and movies are). I allude to the sage Puddleglum when I paraphrase that I'd rather believe in a fantasy that seems real than a reality that strikes me as false. I think humans want there to be a point to life, and, if nothing else, old stuff gives a window back to a time when people actually thought there was a point. I like old stuff, and I find relevancies in that old stuff, so I will defend the reading of and the love of that old stuff.

More later.