I just thought I'd write a brief note, because I just bought something I am very, very happy with.
Arty Bees had a copy of the 9th Edition of Encyclopędia Britannica. And it was only $300, because the covers, especially the spines, had been pretty badly damaged... so now they're mine, mine, mine! And look what Wikipedia has to say about them:
The landmark ninth edition, often called 'the Scholar's Edition', was published from 1875 to 1889. The ninth edition included numerous in-depth scholarly articles by pre-eminent authors, and therefore is considered by some to mark the high point in the history of English-language encyclopedias.
Hee hee! Oh, and the parents agreed to chip in to make it a Christmas present, which is pretty awesome. I will probably have to get a book-binder to look at them, so that they don't deteriorate any further, but... how cool is it that I've got a pile of books that were published 100-130 years ago? And they're all very happy to talk about methods of working leather that are "still in use in crude and savage cultures", and other things that make the articles so much artifacts of their times. Oh, it's going to be awesome just browsing through them, seeing what speculations the authors made have panned out, and which haven't.
Of course, there's a big problem -- these are big books, and there are thirty-odd of them. Where am I going to put them? I mean, I intend to have a study/library one day, but that room currently has a young woman living in it, and I can't exactly say, "I'm sorry, I'm going to have to kick one of you flatmates out, because my books need your room." Well, I mean, I could say that, but it would be kind of crazy.
Anyway, I'm sure I'll manage to work something out. But I'm really glad that, after wavering for a good quarter-hour, I actually bought them. I think they're something I'm going to enjoy for a long time.
(C has just pointed out that this makes my 300-gig external hard drive the second-best $300 impulse buy I've ever made. That's pretty cool, too. ;)
Posted by svend at October 29, 2006 10:03 PMThat's seriously cool. Old books! Encyclopaedias! Will they all fit on one bookshelf?
Posted by: Rachel at October 30, 2006 6:59 AMI'm unbelievably jealous.
I love old articles and things like that... a friend of mines' parents had a bathroom that had, instead of wallpaper, old Hudsons Bay Company advertisements on the walls. I would make up excuses to go to the bathroom, just so I could look at the 'steel ribbed corsets' and 'fashion parasols'.
I'd like to laugh and say what a funny kid I was, but the truth is that I'd do the same thing now =)
Posted by: Patty at October 30, 2006 9:48 AMI must confess that I find the prospect of the quantitity and variety of public domain artwork that those tomes will contain to be incredibly intriguing...
Posted by: Matt at October 30, 2006 1:23 PMHaven't you got a nice wide hallway you could put a bookshelf in?
We are hunting for houses at the moment, and I hope we can find one like that cos we have far too many bookshelves than most people find necessary :)
Posted by: fish at November 1, 2006 2:41 PMYeah, my "nice wide hallway" currently has five bookshelves. ;) I'm currently thinking about putting shelving up in the main room -- not for these books, of course, but for some of the overflow.
My other cool recent purchase was a NZ travel guide from the 1920s, which had descriptions of all the little towns, as well as advertising sections in the front and back. It's pretty nifty. :)
Posted by: Svend at November 1, 2006 3:27 PM