Alright, I'm down to about 75 books. I think I need to look through them and muse a bit, and then I'll post the list. In the meantime, here's our last philosophical thinks upon sorting through the books...
WRITING IN BOOKS
My Grandfather
he was the English lit prof who gave me so many of my old-lit books
easy to recognise his handwriting, it's tiny and near illegible
His wife, my grandmother
she died of breast cancer before I was born
Her brother
Fernando
Moi
PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW
It's harder to part with books that were my grandfather's--the Miltons and Chaucers and Elizabethan plays. Or books I read in university or college and enjoyed, like all the romances--Sir Gawain, Chretien de Troyes, The Song of Roland, the Canterbury Tales. I was contemplating Tristan and Iseult, which I've never read, and two reviews on Goodreads were praising the person who read it at Librivox (which I gather does audios of varying quality.) Which reminded me of the pleasure I took in listening to Chaucer in the car, eons ago, and decided it's probably the way to go.
So they all went. Except this teeny volume of Dante...
Even though I'd already chosen to keep the Dante he gave me in 1989 with Dore illustrations.
Which I keep next to the annotated Christmas Carol I stole from my father and used so much it's falling apart. (I even visited the graveyard pictured here, on London.)
I also kept my destroyed Friday's Child, though I have a better copy, cause it was the first Heyer I read. Picked up at a second hand store in Kingston by my mum, and casually tossed on the staircase: "I got this for you, you'll like it."
THE MARKERS OF OUR TOMES
Today's collection of bookmarks, including a plane ticket, a card from my brother, a security tag, a photo of Stratford Upon Avon, a 1990 calendar from my old church showing the holy days, the words to The Rose, a page from a course calendar, and a newspaper clipping from my mother adverising a church that "is not like spinach!"
3 comments:
75 - so you still have to cut the takers by two thirds. Going to be hard.
Your bookmarks are so much more inspiring than mine. Mine are usually little corners torn from something.
I can see how it would be hard to let go of things your family had written in.
I have 52 cloth handkerchiefs. I love cloth handkerchiefs but I have them because my dad bought them at a yard sale before he got sick.
I just found another bookmark, of Chewbacca!
That's nice, about the handkerchiefs. Have you ever put them on your blog?
It's a beautiful collection. I am touched by it and the connections that run back so far.
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