books and thingsOctober 30, 2005
Wilbur shit on the bathroom floor. Pajama Woman banged on the door to notify us urgently that there has been a rash of car break-ins and car thefts in the condo parking lot this week. Despite these interruptions we managed to eat breakfast, get dressed, and drive to Boston for the 2005 Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair. We looked at antiquated books, many of them in French. I could afford none of them. Even when I found out that both Charles Lyell and Francois La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt (who I think is not the La Rochefoucauld of the Maxims) had visited the Merrimack Valley in their North American travels. La Rochefoucauld's 8 volumes would count as part of my Merrimack Valley collection if only I could get the dealer to sell them for $100. At least the guy didn't laugh. I think the Charles Lyell vendor probably went home and told all his book dealer friends how delusional I am and how I insisted on browsing the book right up until the announcement tha the book fair was closing in 5 minutes. Despite leaving empty handed there were fabulous highlights including: browsing a 17th century treatise on fungi with exquisite copper plate engravings while chatting with a delightful bookseller who enjoyed my enjoyment of the book even knowing I wasn't going to buy it; catching up with Phil-Person-of-Domino (Emeritus) who now lives in Bath, Maine and sells books over the Internet or at book fairs - no shop -- and finding out that all three of his elderly basset hounds have now passed on but he now has another basset hound and a westie 'cause Mrs Phil-Person-of-Domino wanted another basset but Phil wanted a westie and then when he visited an elder who was giving up his basset hound to go into a nursing home found out the elder also was having to give up a westie; seeing a first edition of Moby Dick. Alas can't make this entry all one sentence stream of consciousness as much as I want to. Oh darn, something I was reading mentioned Franklin Pierce too -- must've been Charles Lyell or someone else entirely because La Rochefoucauld was here in 1795 - 1796. Darn, should have written it down. Maybe I imagined it. I frequently hallucinate connections to Franklin Pierce :-) Not sure what I was urgently supposed to do to prevent past car thefts before breakfast but at least the book fair distracted me from the anxiety for awhile.
Today's
Bird Sightings
outside my house
house sparrow
blue jay
American crow
South
Station
herring gull
Today's
Reading
Neal Cassady Collected Letters: 1944-1967 by Neal
Cassady, Theatre of Fish by John Gimlette, The
Prophet of Dry Hill by David Gessner
This
Year's Reading
2005 Booklist
Today's
Starting Pitchers
No
baseball 'til spring.
|
|
||
Copyright © 2005, Janet I. Egan