Thursday, January 7, 2010

Great turns of phrase

"It's like I died and went to Hibbing."

Here's one that will ring true for any book lover, from Lukyanenko's _Twilight Watch_, from a scene where Anton is looking at the witch Arina's book collection:

"A lot of them are just lumber."

Who among us doesn't have a lot of just lumber in our libraries? We love all our books, but when it comes down to it, only 5 or 10 or 15% are really prizes, treasured friends or uncommon editions with intrinsic value or just hard to find -- there's a lot of filler rescued from charity booksales, garage sales, acquired in a stack from the used bookstore because they looked like they might be worth a try. Even the ones that are not great, don't mean anything personally, medioce books in fair condition that if you were to sell them would only be sold by the inch or the bag -- we keep them, because we can't bear to part with them just in case we might want to read them again, or pass them on to someone who might appreciate them...

1 comment:

  1. oh tell me about lumber, I have built bookshelves everywhere to house it all. When I find I no longer read or like a particular author, I bundle it or them up and take them to Goodwill or the Salvation Army.

    Since 95% of my books came from there, or from church booksales anyway, Im just giving back. Another great place is library sales. National Library month(week) is coming up soon, and most libraries hold a booksale. Makes it easier to part with the old stuff if you know it's going to a good home.

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