Before I start, let me just say that the books you are about to see haven’t all been bought from library booksales, despite what the title of this post says. However, we have managed to strike ridiculously with the sale in our local library, as our two boys now have about 15 or more new books for little over £3. Who would argue with that?
I didn’t get as many, but have acquired a few recently from other sources too. Before I list these, let me just mention these two books first:
Please forgive the absolutely atrocious quality of the photo, but they are:
- Plato- Republic 50p
- Francis Pryor- Britain AD: A Quest for Arthur, England and the Anglo-Saxons 50p
I meant to do a blog post on these over a week ago, but just never got around to it. The latter book has refueled my interest in the Anglo-Saxons (I haven’t really picked up on this recently, in part because all of my Saxon archaeology books are still sitting in large fruit-boxes in our boxroom, along with the majority of our other books), and it actually seems to be an academic text masquerading as a populist history work. Always nice. However, the main thing I want to say about these is just that I was quite shocked with the way the woman behind the counter in the charity shop looked at me when I handed them over to pay. Do people in our area not read such books? Are ancient Greek philosophy and Anglo-Saxon archaeology beyond the scope of people here, are were they just beyond her? I don’t know. Anyhoo. The other recent purchases stand as follows:
- Anthony Kamm- The Romans: An Introduction 50p (library book sale)
- Roald Dahl- Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life 10p (library book sale)
- Albert Camus- The Plague 25p
- Jean Rhys- Voyage in the Dark 50p
- Anon.- Sweeney Todd or A String of Pearls 50p
- Jules Verne- Journey to the Centre of the Earth 50p (Folio Society edition!)
- Stephen Hawking- A Brief History of Time: The Updated and Expanded Tenth Anniversary Edition 50p (library book sale)
- Lewis Carroll- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass 10p (library book sale)
As you may recall from a previous post, I already own a copy of the Hawking work, but thought that 50p wasn’t bad for an updated edition; similarly, you may recall from a previous book-buying post and my ‘Thoughts on…’, I already have individual copies of the Carroll books, but for 10p… Well, there’s an intro. in this one, a series of notes, extra text not in the ones I had, and also the spine isn’t faded (as my individual copies were). Oh, and it’s published by Oxford University Press, too. Not bad. Also, the Roman book is published by Routledge, which is a very good publisher of archaeology texts, and appeared regularly in the bibliographies that accompanied my essays at uni. This book would actually have been handy to have had then, as it covers a lot of background about the Romans that would have been useful for essay background and revision.
I plan to get up soon several ‘Thoughts on…’ posts, as I’ve been reading quite a bit recently (as I said in my last post), and hope to get these done soon. The books I will be looking at are ‘Heart of Darkness’, ‘Roverandom’, ‘The Torrents of Spring’, ‘Just So Stories’, and ‘Diamonds are Forever’- so quite a bit to come!
Electric Puppet 