Gustav... I looked and the oldest medical book we had this time was from 1960. I'll keep you in mind and if we get anything that looks promising, I'll tell you. We get new donations every day and never know what to expect.
Tacoma Book Center only bought $150 worth of books this time... it wasn't a big sale and I'm worried that we didn't make the goal of $2K, but I am SO GLAD it is over. It's a huge amount of work and really hard on my body. I managed to strain my back lifting a box, smashed my finger between two crates, and broke three nails. The pickings were good though, at least for me.
$20 bought a 1992 set of Encylopedia Brittanica to replace my older set
and these books were $1 each or less:
With Lawrence of Arabia by Lowell Thomas, 1924
Roughing It by Mark Twain, Reader's Digest ed.
Dark of the Moon by Sara Teasdale, 1936
One Day on Beetle Rock, Sally Carrighar, 1944
Landscape and Memory, Simon Schama
The Dream of Scipio, Iain Pears
The Book of Ruth, Jane Hamilton
Best Tales of the Yukon, Robert Service
Mr Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, Lawrence Wechsler
Dowsing, the Ancient Art of Rhabdomancy, Robert Leftwich
I also found an old religious magazine someone had donated (and we don't accept magazines so they sneaked it in) with a color photo & small article about the "Mysterious Staircase of Santa Fe." That's one of my pet interests... so I had to snap that up, too.
Piffka -- Landscape and Memory is a wonderful, chewy, slow, high-nutrition pleasure. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Thanks, Tartarin. I think it may be the best one in the lot. It is in your library, then? The plates are fantastic. I'd read reviews & seen it in bookstores, but never free'd up the cash for it. It was originally $40~ I couldn't believe it when I saw it as we were cleaning up. I'm so happy the book sellers missed it! It's even a stated 1st edition.
Mine's a paperback, Piff, and the plates are there, but since it's not the best paper, the plates are a little dim but not unpleasurable. I read it over time. Schama is one of my favorite writers and I'll read just about anything he writes, understanding that on each occasion I'm sitting down to the kind of meal that's almost impossible to eat -- as though the best ten chefs had each contributed his best dish and it's all spread out in front of you!
So it is a delicious book? Great! That's just the right kind of book to keep in your personal library. I don't understand how it was overlooked by so many people -- there were at least 250 avid book-buyers. I am more interested in this book from a naturalist's viewpoint (being a treehugger), but I see he is an historian.
I saw a book I liked, when I was on holiday once in a hiker's hostel in Scotland, and I never could get a copy of it or find it again.
It was called The Art of the Wood Butcher and it is about homemade cabins in the woods, building small dwellings or follies, that kind of thing. Paperback, illustrated; probably published late 1960s
It's very interesting, to me at least. Anyone any ideas about how to find it?
I've had best success with:
abebooks.com
I think it's worth a try, McTag...
Piff -- It's diffuse and thoughtful -- a thinker's book, not so much a book for a quick read. That's probably why. It's beautifully written. You might want to sneak a peek at some of the reviews, like in Amazon.
Howdy, McTag. I looked around but couldn't find anything. Maybe you're misremembering the name?
(When are you going to report on your travels? I want to hear about how you fared!)
Thanks, Tartarin. Good idea.
