Wanted: One Resourceful Book Lover

Posted on February 17, 2012 by maedez

Wanted: One resourceful book lover
Your Mission: To invent an easily removable price sticker that does not require any of the following: a razor, solvent or 20 minutes spent digging with a fingernail.
Requirements: Patience and excellent sales ability, as you will need every book shop in the world to use your product.
Your Reward: Eternal glory and the genuine thanks of millions of readers everywhere. Oh, and lots of cash, as you will doubtless become filthy rich in the
Paradise Ruined by Another Cheap Label

process.
Signed: Maedez

A Year in Books/Day 48: Seeing Europe with Famous Authors

Posted on February 17, 2012 by maedez

Title: Seeing Europe with Famous Authors Vol. II Great Britain and Ireland Part Two
Editor: Francis W. Halsey
Year Published: 1914 (Funk & Wagnalls Company)
Year Purchased: September, 2010
Source: Springfield (OH) Antique Show & Flea Market
About: This tiny book was one of a ten-volume compilation series culled from previously published travel essays by famous authors. On hand are pieces by Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Boswell, William Makepeace Thackeray, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson and others. Even in 1914, some of the essays were decades old. Now, they all read like history as well as travel-they remain fascinating word-gems of a time long ago surpassed by the frantic rhythms of our modern world.
Motivation: I bought this perfectly preserved first-edition copy while shopping for vintage lovelies for my December 2010 nuptials. It was too adorable and cheap ($3.00) to pass up. History and literature is a heady mix for this girl.
Times Read: 1
Random Excerpt/Page 54: “It is doubtful whether the name of any lighthouse is so familiar throughout the English-speaking world as the “Eddystone.” Certainly no other “pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day,” can offer so romantic a story of dogged engineering perseverance, of heartrending disappointments, disaster, blasted hopes, and brilliant success.”
Happiness Scale: 7 1/2
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Posted on February 17, 2012 by maedez

Title: The Girl from the Fiction Department A Portrait of Sonia Orwell
Author: Hilary Spurling
Year Published: 2002/This Edition: 2003 (Counterpoint)
Year Purchased: 2010
Source: My Mom
About: A thoughtful, even-handed biography of George Orwell’s controversial second wife (and widow). Although it was written by a later-in-life friend of Sonia’s with the stated goal of setting the record straight, it’s the real deal: well-researched, compassionate and honest.
Motivation: My Mother knows me well! Biography + complex woman + literary theme= winner!
Times Read: 1
Random Excerpt/Page 87: “This was the Sonia who bewitched others all her life, and whose abrupt disappearance invariably came as a shock. Maurice didn’t care for the second self who replaced the first, the wary, reticent Sonia whose uncertainty made her overbearing, the Sonia who could never trust herself or anyone else, especially not someone who seemed in retrospect to have surprised her into an intimacy she feared and could not sustain.”
Happiness Scale: 8