We each have our own grail-quests.
Mar. 2nd, 2003 10:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyBefore I developed fiscal responsibility, I used to go bookstore trolling on a frighteningly regular basis. I am reminded of this today because digging out the David Kirby poem has induced great crashing waves of nostalgia for the days when I spent hours combing the used bookstore(s) for obscure volumes of poetry like that one and bought everything I found.
Used-bookstore-trolling is an art, and it's one I used to be extremely good at. My best-ever coups? One: in the last hour of a library sale, where they were giving the books away because otherwise they had nothing to do with them, finding a book on the particular corner of history that MH is most interested in and taking it because, hey, free, and then getting home and having his face light up because it was (a.) tremendously important and influential, (b.) out of print, and (c.) scarcer than hens' teeth. Two, when trolling for Prelims books, finding the Oxford Complete Poems of Robert Sidney (Philip's younger and much more minor brother), which see (c.) above. (Also, I have a Thing for the lesser Sidneys like Robert and his daughter Mary Wroth.) And then, of course, the day that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
heres_luck's dissertation director dragged me, all but physically, down to a used bookstore near campus and demanded that I buy the 4 volume complete John Webster which had been shelved with the dictionaries (Noah, John--a Webster's a Webster, right?). And another library sale, where I got the 12 volume Golden Bough for $2 a volume. I haven't read much of it, but I love having it on my bookcase where I can just look at it from time to time and purr.
An art, a passion, a vocation. Used bookstore trolling. I still have a list as long as your arm of books I'm looking for and still have a dangerous propensity to get sucked into bookstores as I pass them. But I practice better frugality now, and do not succumb to the sirens' singing. ... At least not often.
Used-bookstore-trolling is an art, and it's one I used to be extremely good at. My best-ever coups? One: in the last hour of a library sale, where they were giving the books away because otherwise they had nothing to do with them, finding a book on the particular corner of history that MH is most interested in and taking it because, hey, free, and then getting home and having his face light up because it was (a.) tremendously important and influential, (b.) out of print, and (c.) scarcer than hens' teeth. Two, when trolling for Prelims books, finding the Oxford Complete Poems of Robert Sidney (Philip's younger and much more minor brother), which see (c.) above. (Also, I have a Thing for the lesser Sidneys like Robert and his daughter Mary Wroth.) And then, of course, the day that
heres_luck's dissertation director dragged me, all but physically, down to a used bookstore near campus and demanded that I buy the 4 volume complete John Webster which had been shelved with the dictionaries (Noah, John--a Webster's a Webster, right?). And another library sale, where I got the 12 volume Golden Bough for $2 a volume. I haven't read much of it, but I love having it on my bookcase where I can just look at it from time to time and purr.An art, a passion, a vocation. Used bookstore trolling. I still have a list as long as your arm of books I'm looking for and still have a dangerous propensity to get sucked into bookstores as I pass them. But I practice better frugality now, and do not succumb to the sirens' singing. ... At least not often.
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no subject
Date: 2003-03-02 11:04 am (UTC)* You might have to scrounge up a magnifying ball/glass, as I cannot find the magnifying ball that came with it just now.
* It stays mine, but it lives with you, until for some reason I really miss it or something like that, in which case I will give you as much warning as possible.
* You agree to help somebody who asks for the OED info on a word, and you perform this service no less than once a fortnight. (Caveat: help too much, and let it cut into your creative/productive time, and I will start growling at you, says the Lioness who intends to maximize her own pleasure in a world supplied with Truepenny's work.)
* You have an OED teaparty with me sometime at a convention. (I think an OED teaparty would be one where there is tea, conviviality, and much looking up of words, with discussion arising therefrom.)
If this seemeth good to thee, speak.
* to quote the fannish reference, "Joke, Moshe!" (translation: I am being facetious.)
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Date: 2003-03-02 11:05 am (UTC)But only about the sinfulness. I would not joke about the OED.
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Date: 2003-03-02 11:45 am (UTC)TRUEPENNY: {shocked} Well I should hope not! Such matters are NOT suitable for frivolity. Really!
EXIT, STAGE LEFT, with much maiden-auntly flouncing.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-02 11:42 am (UTC)My only question/caveat has to do with the following:
* You agree to help somebody who asks for the OED info on a word, and you perform this service no less than once a fortnight.
Is that meaning I'd have to go out and hunt people down--Hey, you! You want a definition? Yeah, I'm talking to YOU, punk!--or just that if people ask, I answer? I'd be happy to be an OED oracle, but am not so much about the missionary work.
Other than that, all systems are go go go!
no subject
Date: 2003-03-02 12:54 pm (UTC)However, a t-shirt with the legend
OED ORACLE
"Hey, you! You want a definition?
Yeah, I'm talking to YOU, punk!"
is now momentarily, deeply, delightedly faunched after.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-03 07:06 am (UTC)Most excellent.