Monday, June 24, 2019

Library Loot Box

One of the libraries that I use for occasional nonfiction reads is going through a massive summer discarding, and – though part of my brain is steadily kicking me – I've taken advantage of it to acquire a box...or two...of books.   Mostly history, as you can imagine. I’ve made a couple of trips, but I missed the week they put out the science stuff, which is disappointing.    Although I’m sure more than few of these will simply be forwarded to Goodwill, I did want to get them while the gettin' was good. 

The Haul



Familiar Poems, Annotated, Isaac Asimov. I’ve read this one before, but I do collect Asimov as I can.
Brave New World, Aldhous Huxley. Read a couple of times, but it and 1984 are ever relevant. 
The Saudis,  Sandra Mackey
Afghanistan: A Short History of its People and Politics,  Martin Ewans. (There were a lot of books about Afghanistan and the Taliban...all purchased in 2002, all read furiously in 2002-2003, and mostly untouched since.)  
From Beirut to Jerusalem, Thomas Friedman
The Encyclopedia of Evolution
Benjamin Franklin: The First American
The Life of Our Lord, Charles Dickens
Daily Life in the Time of Jesus, Henri Daniel-Rops
The World of Rome, Michael Grant
Europe in Our Time
Medieval Lives
The Middle Ages, Morris Bishop
19th Century Britain
The Nazi Seizure of Power
Kristallnacht
Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey.  Read this one before, but  the prose roped me into reading more of him and put a yearning to see the Southwest into me.
They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis and Arthur Greaves
The Early Ayn Rand: Unpublished Short Fiction




I was doubtful about Europe in Our Time -- at best it was published in the 1960s or early 1970s -- but  I liked the airplane art on the cover. (In the above picture, it's the dark blue book to the far right near the tire.)   

Here's hoping these get read!

5 comments:

  1. great haul! many i've never heard of but that sound really interesting... i didn't know Asimov wrote any poems, but he wrote everything else, i shouldn't be surprised...

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    1. As far as I know, he didn't: Familiar Poems consists of 37 classic poems familiar to western audiences (at least, western audiences of the mid-20th century), with explanations of their historical, literary, and other obscure references. I read it ten years ago:
      https://thisweekatthelibrary.blogspot.com/2009/05/familar-poems-annotated.html

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  2. I LOVE LIBRARY DISCARDS! It is one of my most favorite things about the library, go figure

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    1. Mine is that old book smell. Probably carciongenic but I'll risk it.

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  3. When we did our last discarding, various staff member were given different sections. I usually get Science, Computers, and History (500s, 0 - 100s, and 930s - 990s in Dewey terms. We have to evaluate the book's condition, how often it's been checked out, how many books in a section we have on a particular subject, that kind of thing. Currency is also important -- there's no point in keeping Windows 98/XP/Vista books on the shelf any more, but we do keep a couple of Win 7 resources juuuuuuuuuuuuuust in case.

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