One in three has bought a book just to look intelligent

[Teremia]

Frelga wrote:

Teremia wrote: See, Voronwë? You're a better man than I.

But we knew that already!

Of course, but he is not a better woman.

Ah, but Frelga, YOU'RE the one in the Éowyn garb, I notice!

to Frelga, who trumps all such gender questions.

[anthriel]

Frelga, I don't think the DaVinci Code was written to engross us in Dan Brown's characters, because his characters are always the same from book to book, even when they have different names.

The storyline is hauntingly familiar from book to book, as well.

It's still a pretty good read. If you haven't already read Angels and Demons, that is. If you have, you'll find some plot arcs that look awfully familiar.

I must say it is nice to hang out with so many people who love books. I tend to an ecletic mix of reading materials, but shy away from the Oprah book list choices... Dysfunctional Families in Various Degrees of Implosion-type stuff.

Gimmee a good, horrific murder and a detective with a logical approach to nailing the oh-so-smug perpetrator anyday.

[Frelga]

Gimmee a good, horrific murder and a detective with a logical approach to nailing the oh-so-smug perpetrator anyday.

Elizabeth Peters?

About the only type of book I will NOT read is where the blurb says "a sweeping saga of passion and betrayal, spanning generations and continents".

[anthriel]

Oooo, you mean Elizabeth Peters, whose character Amelia Peabody Emerson, the Victorian feminist who, together with her devastatingly handsome and brilliant husband Radcliffe Emerson, takes the archaeology world by storm?

Never heard of her.

[vison]

I've had my nose in a book all my life. I can't sit and read by the endless hour any more, though. My old arms start to ache and the glasses feel heavy on my nose.

I try to stay out of bookstores since I never get out without spending far too much money. Even paperbacks cost the earth nowadays, when you buy them new. I buy a lot secondhand, but that's time consuming since the secondhand stores are usually not well organized.

I have a terrible confession to make and this is as good a place as any, since it reveals a Book Sin. You know how some restaurants and offices have "books by the yard"? They put up shelves of old books as "decor". Well, I can never resist checking out ANYONE's bookcase, even a restaurant's. I was in a White Spot a few years ago (Athrabeth will know what a White Spot is, a kind of family-type place) and there, up on a shelf, mixed in with some Reader's Digest condensed books, was a copy of The Memoirs of a Rifleman by John Kincaid, this is a memoir by a man who was with Wellington in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, a book I had longed to read and could not find anywhere. Long out of print, they told me, and I didn't know about ABE books, if they even existed.

Anyway, I stole the book. I did. I feel a little bit bad, but not much. I bought another Reader's Digest Condensed book from the Sally Ann and went back to the restaurant and switched it and have lived with the guilt ever since. I do feel a bit bad, as I say, but it hasn't kept me awake at night! I don't think the book is particularly valuable, although to be honest, I don't know if it is or not.

Kincaid's memoir is wonderful to read and I am glad I have it. Even though it was obtained by nefarious means.

I know a man who collects books. He actually buys them and puts them unread on a shelf. I don't get it. I truly don't understand it. A book is not an OBJECT to me, it's a READ. I am not good to my books, I bend their spines and fold their pages over and spill coffee on them, etc., but I love them as no "collector" could possibly love them!!! My LOTR books are a disgrace, I suppose, but after well over 100 reads, they should be worn and they are.

Buying books secondhand has its bright spots other than saving money. I'm not a "collector" as I said, but I have still managed to find, completely by accident, several nice first editions. One is "Who Has Seen the Wind", a lovely Canadian classic by W. O. Mitchell. Another is an autographed copy of one of Peter Gzowski's books, dear man we Canuckians all loved and miss to this day. And yet another is a First Edition of Anne of Green Gables, which I can't believe I paid $1.50 for. The bookshop guy, Big Weird Bill, specialized in scifi, and he had a bunch of odds and ends in a box which I rumbled through.

*sigh* A tidy bookcase is something I dream of, but will never attain. They are stacked everywhere. Once a year I hire a lady to come and dust my books, taking each one out and vacuuming it and dusting the shelf, etc. I can't do that since I suffer from an awful dust allergy. Well, it's true, I do!!! The last lady probably thinks I'm mad, since some of my books are held together with elastic bands or are kept in ziploc bags. "You sure you wanna keep these?" she asked. "Maybe you should buy some new ones?"

Philistines are everywhere.

[truehobbit]

That's great, vison!

Well, I suppose I'd probably have asked the restaurant if I could have the book!
But still, if it's a fashion to put old books there for decoration, I don't think it was the owner's heirloom they put on the shelf. They must reckon with stuff getting lost - like ashtrays or so, too.

I don't understand how one can collect books as objects, either. I wouldn't know a priceless first edition from any other used copies, I think.
I do buy a lot more than I can read, because I don't read all that much, but I don't buy for collecting, but because I mean to read what I buy some day.
And I am very nice to my books, I think.
Wouldn't touch a book with greasy fingers or bend the spine too much.
I've read a book I bought as a present for someone before giving it away and you couldn't see the difference.
And you can see the progress I made in loving LOTR by looking at my copies: I was quite impatient with the first third of the first book, so I bent the spine rather recklessly, leaving those typical creases at the back.
Then I began to love it.
Book II and III, by contrast, were handled as if they were something sacred!
Book III looks a bit more worn, because of the appendices, it's handled quite often for looking things up, but on the whole, only a minimum of spine-bending on these.

This unfortunately means I also have problems lending books to people (only if I really, really know you well - and probably not to vison, after what I've just read! ) - books are somehow very personal to me.

[MaidenOfTheShieldarm]

TP, you make a good point about books becoming elite. Books are the new old status symbol, it seems. (And I so agree about living in Boston. I love sitting on the T and realising that half the of the bus/train is reading, too! On a completely unrelated side note, your location is fabulous. )

I have a terrible confession to make and this is as good a place as any, since it reveals a Book Sin.

Perhaps my ethics are messed up here, but I do not regard that as a sin. You rescued a rare and wonderful book from a fate worse than being out of print!

My LOTR books are a disgrace, I suppose, but after well over 100 reads, they should be worn and they are.

They can't be worse than mine.

Big Weird Bill

That's a fabulous name. I wish I had a cool epithet like that.

As for The Da Vinci Code, I agree with Frelga's assessment. It's the kind of book that you can't stop reading, but after you're done, you can't figure out what was so great about it.

[vison]

Big Weird Bill was and is a character. He is big, and he is weird, and his name is Bill. He runs a strange little hole-in-the-wall store where he sells scifi and fantasy and is incredibly rude to any idiot who wanders in thinking it's a business dealing with the public! You have to be introduced, more or less, he regards strangers as certain to be thieves or disreputable people in some way, although how anyone could be worse than he is himself is beyond me. I don't see how he can make a living running this place, so maybe the rumours about him being a fence or something are true. He reminds me of the guy on the Simpsons, the guy who runs the store called "Frodo Lives", is that what it's called? Bill knows EVERYTHING and is only too glad to tell you. He always has the radio on loud and it's always one of those phone-in shows, where they talk politics and space aliens and whatnot.

My youngest son used to buy all his comics from Bill, and that's how I got to know him. He is said to be married to a perfectly nice woman, but I don't know. He drives an old Cadillac, which he keeps in immaculate form, although it lists terribly on the driver's side since he is so heavy.

Books, as a business, seem to attract strange people, don't you think? I don't mean the big chain stores, like Chapters or Barnes and Noble, but the oldfashioned little stores.

Needless to say his store isn't called "Big Weird Bill's", but it's something close. He's not very nice, actually, but he's interesting.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I expect to fully enjoy The Da Vinci Code. I'm not nearly as "literary" as some would have us believe.

[vison]

I expect to fully enjoy The Da Vinci Code. I'm not nearly as "literary" as some would have us believe.

Well, I read two or three bodice rippers one winter, being cabin-bound.

No. I lied. I wasn't cabin-bound.

The books were terrible and I only read them for the spicey bits.

Mind you, many perfectly lit'ry books have spicey bits, too.

I'm not tempted to read The Da Vinci code, myself. I regard it as a kind of bodice-ripper, though, and won't sneer at those who do read it.

Are there any spicey bits?

[Frelga]

No spicey bits, vison. Very chaste. I think it's the biggest beef I have with that book - it seemed to me entirely devoid of passion of any kind.

But it was an absorbing plot to read through - once.

[Jnyusa]

Lots of self-mutilation as a substitute for sex.

I expect that's a bodice-ripper of sorts for some folks.

Jn