Update on Calgary’s Used Book Sales (and two Used Book Stores)

This is an update on the CBC Calgary READS Big Book Sale. They had hoped to hold the sale in September, but will now have to postpone it until next year. They are in great need of support, as their website says…

We currently have multiple, no contact, volunteer opportunities such as Porch Pick Ups, Delivery of Book Bags, Little Free Library fill ups and Community Book Drops. If you have an interest in participating, please email us at info@calgaryreads.com for more details.

The health, safety and well-being of our volunteers, employees and customers is our top priority and we are following the lead of Canadian public health authorities during this challenging time. Due to the current challenges of COVID-19, our Big Book Sale is postponed. We are planning to hold the Big Book Sale next year… as soon as we know more, you will too. Your willingness to support us with your time and energy is deeply appreciated. If you have any questions please contact us at: info@calgaryreads.com

Also, as I posted in May, RESET Society postponed their book sale to next year, but you can still give some needed support here.

“We have made the decision to postpone the 18th Annual Book Drive & Sale. We are truly sorry that the Book Drive & Sale will not be able to move forward in the spring as in previous years, but we are feeling excited about the possibilities for this event next year.

This is an extremely important fundraiser for our agency as it provides over 12% of our revenue and we thank you for your considering supporting RESET Society in other ways during this time: https://resetcalgary.ca/how-you-can-help/;

And just a note…if you are looking for brick-and-mortar used book stores….

My two favorites are back in business! I have visited Fair’s Fair and Better Books and Bibles in the past month, and I know they would love all the business they can get. Treat yourself!

I hope that you are well and safe. We will get through this, and I believe there will be good things that result from this pandemic–let’s watch and see. God bless you!

I leave you with a photo from my old, old Junior Instructor that always makes me smile…

Review of Back to Arcady by Frank Waller Allen

Thirty years ago it was said of me that I was as gallant a beau as ever bowed over a fair lady’s hand… I am more years past fifty than I like to acknowledge, and now a girl of twenty is coming to upset the habits and routine of a lifetime.

One of my treasures from this spring’s used book sales is a sentimental romance written in 1905, full of detailed background borders on every page.

As is typical of novels written at the turn of the century, the language is exquisite, the tone is thoughtful, and the plot gentle, original and full of genuine emotion. I read it in two sittings.

The dedication sets the author’s tone…

The story takes place in a small village in Kentucky. It begins with the narrator anticipating a visit from the daughter of his one true love, Drucilla.

“I knew her mother in the long ago. She herself was but twenty when last I saw her, and yet today hers is the only face that remains clear in my memory… Shortly after I saw Drucilla for the last time, she married William Dudley, the companion of my youth and friend of my manhood. …Then when little Marcia Dudley–My Lady o’ Roses–was born, the mother died…”

“It is in the silence that follows the storm,” says the proverb, “and not the silence before it, that we should search for the budding flower.”

Many years later when she was a young lady, Marcia’s father, dying, sent a letter begging him to take his only child and guard her as his own. Marcia travels across the ocean to America. At first sight of her, the narrator (who is never named), is shocked to see what appears to be his long lost love, so similar is Marcia’s face to her mother’s. He introduces Marcia to his neighbor Louis and others in the nearby village, and she settles in.

In time, Louis tells them both how he had previously traveled to France, where he had been bewitched by a woman playing a sweet tune on a violin. They’d fallen in love, but they couldn’t be together. The woman vowed that she could never play her violin again until she reunited with her love, and he’d returned to Kentucky broken-hearted.

Marcia eventually reveals that she was the one Louis had loved in Paris, but she had not known where he’d gone when he left her. Now they are reunited, and the narrator muses,

“Then, after a while, there came to me from without the night, like unto the perfume of roses, the soft, warm tones of a lover’s violin bearing the message with which, years and years ago in a garden in Picardy, Margot o’ the Crimson Lips gave the heart of her to the Dreammaker.”

Here was a lovely discovery about halfway through…

It was not easy to find information about the author. Frank Waller Allen was an American author born in 1878 in Kentucky, United States. He was educated at Transylvania University, Kentucky, 1902, and worked as a journalist, minister, professor and lecturer.

Among the author’s other books are My Ships Aground (1900); The Golden Road (1910); The Lovers of Skye (1913); The Brothers of Bagdad (1913); Painted Windows (1918); The Great Quest (1918); My One Hundred Best Novels (1919); Wings of Beauty (1929); and Creative Living (1930).

You can read Back to Arcady online at Archive.org, or Forgotten Books, or buy it from Amazon, Abe books, eBay and other online book sellers.

I Love Old Books! (Part 4)

Even though I don’t necessarily need to read all the gems that I find at the book sales—it’s enough to surround myself with them—I do read them. Now, to be honest, if a book is more than 50 or 100 years old, after quickly thumbing through it to touch and smell the pages, I generally don’t feel excited enough to sit down and read it on the spot. I confess that I expect to find it dry, pedantic, colorless or irrelevant. But I am almost always wrong.

I find surprisingly relevant, valuable words, stories and messages written by authors with extraordinary depth, thoughtfulness, insight, and wholesomeness, and a different internal perspective than many contemporary authors. Their attitudes and perspectives very often inspire and elevate my own.

Some antique books are actually difficult to read because they are visually and verbally dense, but they are well worth the effort. An example is R.D. Blackmoor’s Lorna Doone, written in 1869. The first time I ever saw this book was at a library in Sylvan Lake, Alberta, where we were camping. I had an afternoon to relax so I decided to see what kind of love stories people in the 19th century wrote. But the “old” definition of romance is not focused entirely on a love story. I was surprised and at first disappointed that the Romance of Exmoor was not the kind of romance that Jane Austen or Georgette Heyer wrote.

Lorna Doone falls under the definition of “a novel depicting heroic or marvelous deeds, pageantry, romantic exploits, etc., usually in a historical or imaginary setting.” I muddled through the first several chapters and then realized I didn’t know what was going on with the characters or the plot. I had to restart it about four times, but after that, something magical happened and I got into the language. Then I couldn’t put it down! I encourage you to give it a try, in the original or a more recent version. It’s a story of loyalty, love, courage, heroism—and it’s not just the men who risk their lives.

Another example is one published in 1894, Titus, a Comrade of the Cross, a book my mom gave me. Apparently, the original publisher of this book offered a $1,000 reward to anyone who could produce a manuscript that would set a child’s heart on fire for Christ. In six weeks, the demand was so great for Florence Morse Kingsley’s book that they printed 200,000 additional copies. Can you imagine that in 1894?

For years I was thrilled enough to just look at the unique cover and text. But again, once I finally started reading it and got a feel for the language, I was immersed in a suspenseful adventure. In the midst of the gripping plot, I discovered that a whole chunk of the pages was missing (don’t tell Mom!), but I just picked it up on the next available page and devoured the rest of it. In fact, I felt such admiration and affection for one of the characters, we ended up using his name for the middle name of one of our children.

Are you a kindred old-book-loving spirit? Leave me a comment, or a Like, so I can find you!

I Love Old Books! (Part 3)

Happy New Year! I wonder what books 2013 holds!

I enjoy everything about old books: hunting for them, inhaling the smell of leather and studying them: their covers, publishers, inscriptions, signs of aging, and knowing that I am holding something that was on this earth in a different century. I don’t necessarily need to read all the gems that I find; it’s enough to surround myself with them. But reading them is the frosting on the cake!

In my first post on old books, I mentioned McGuffey’s Eclectic Fourth Reader, published in 1853 by Winthrop B Smith. After digging it out of storage (behind some other books), I thumbed through it and was curious to know what exactly the students were learning from those readers at that time. So I started on page one and made the commitment to read the entire book (over 300 pages of small font). It was a big commitment because I assumed that the lessons were going to be hitting-over-the-head moralizing, boring history, monotonous poetry and irrelevant essays.

But I was in for a pleasant surprise. I wish my school reading assignments (and my children’s) had been as full of such disturbing, dramatic, eye-opening fiction and non-fiction as these. They would motivate a student to read. Even the moralizing stories were great. Yes, there was tough slogging through some, but I was usually rewarded by the end of the piece.

I admit that I skipped most of the diction, articulation, pronunciation and vocabulary lessons. But from time to time, I would read those, and I found it humorous to see how the “incorrect” pronunciations were a Southern U.S. accent:

“E-spe-cial-ly, not ‘spe-cial-ly…
Gov-erns, not gov-uns…
Win-dow-blind, not win-der-bline”

As I was noting my favorite selections, I was curious to know a bit more about the authors, and found most of them well-represented on the internet. One that stood out for me was The Steamboat Trial, by Jacob Abbott, and not so easy to find online, so I’ve included the first 2 pages here, and the last 2 pages here.

Here are a few other poems, plays and essays well worth checking out: Washing Day, by Mrs. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Shylock (from The Merchant of Venice, by Shakespeare), Remarkable Preservation by Professor Wilson, and Religion the Only Basis of Society by William Ellery Channing. Hope you find something that grabs you!

I Love Old Books! (Part 2)

Ever since the Crossroads Used Book Sale, I’ve been enjoying my new old books and writing about why they are such a delight to me. I treasure them because I believe these books were far more precious in their day than a book is now, simply because of the relative scarcity of books and the cost of publishing. Only the cream of the crop would be published. Owning something that was highly valued by the society that produced it makes me value it, too. It is evident that these volumes were made to last, and they did last. Would a book published in 2012 last until 2112? Maybe, but probably not as well as those leather covers and thick pages have lasted.

Here is a well-travelled Christmas present. Notice the “This is My Book” section from Edmonton, Alberta, and the sticker from Santa Monica, California. It is Myths Every Child Should Know, originally published in 1905, edited by Hamilton Wright Mabie.

And those marvellous inscriptions! Did everyone have such exquisite handwriting? Judging from the old school books which made handwriting such a priority, I think most did. (I used to have legible handwriting, until my fingers got out of the habit of writing slowly and gracefully!) Not only is the penmanship a work of art, but reading the note makes me feel like I’m getting a peek into the personal life and family of the original owner.

Here is one of my favorite signatures, in The Pleasures of Life by Sir John Lubbock (copyright 1887). I also love the embossed designs and flowers on the cover.

Any book can transport you to another world and another time in the same way a traveler goes on a holiday, but old books can be like the person who actually lived in that other place and time. You can’t help but notice the differences in language, attitudes and the political climate that come through unintentionally by what the author writes. It makes me feel like I know the author’s world, instead of just reading about it in a history book.

Here is a sweet children’s story book with an inscription from 1923, given as a birthday present. (Don’t you just love how they used the term “Master” for boys?)

And this 1915 book was a reward for a job well done, learning the Ten Commandments…

Do you have any old books that particularly thrill you? Do tell! Send me a message on my About page if you want to send me photos to include on another post.

Happy hunting, and happy reading!

I Love Old Books!

As I mentioned in a previous post, my strategy when tackling huge used book sales is to go to the old books first. But I wonder why? What is it that makes the old books such a delight to me? It was probably my mom who instilled in me a love for old things that stand the test of time, and how I appreciate that, because otherwise I may have skipped the old for the new and missed such joys!

What really excites me is that a hundred-year-old book feels like my little piece of history; these bundles of paper have survived—with little or no aging—for a century! What else do we have that is a hundred years old? For example, can you imagine that the book you hold in your hand with the hundred-year-old copyright was ON THIS EARTH when the Titanic sank, all during World War I (did a soldier have your book in his backpack?), when the first talking movies were invented, when Alexander Fleming was discovering penicillin (could he have owned it?) and during the stock market crash of 1929?

Who bought it first? And how did it get from its first owner to its most recent owner (me)? Did it get handed down to a relative, who loaned it to a friend, who lost it while traveling on a ship and it was eventually found by another passenger years later, who kept it safe and sound in a drawer until giving it to a library, which eventually put it on a bargain table where someone bought it for an antique-lover, who finally donated it to the Calgary Crossroads Book Sale where I bought it?

Here is the first really old book I found, McGuffey’s Eclectic Fourth Reader, published in 1853 by Winthrop B Smith. In about 1990 I was browsing around one of the wonderful used book stores on 16 Avenue NW (that is no longer there), and when I told the owner that I collected old school readers, he said he didn’t have any upstairs, but I could look around in the basement. I picked through boxes and bags of books and found this gem. I think I paid $5 for it.

The spine is in rough shape, and it shows another document under the spine and the top left corner of the front cover. If anyone knows what that practice was for, let me know.

The front cover has a name stamped on it, my best guess being “J. Bruce Smith, HC CALGARY”. It makes me wonder if the schools stamped each book with the student’s name, or if that particular student stamped his own name on it. Or is the Smith on the cover related to the publisher Smith?

Inside the cover on the first page is an inscription (I love inscriptions!). It looks like “Elias N. ___, Jan. 3rd, 1859”.

It actually looks like 1839 to me, but in the text it says it was published in 1853.

The Table of Contents is filled with “Directions for Reading” and interesting-looking Prose and Poetry Lessons, some by authors we still read today. Here is a readable version of the Table of Contents.

In the back there is a refund notice: “Refund 2.50 if returned before June 20, 1932, A.W. ___”. It’s interesting to think that around 1932 the book was already 80 years old, so perhaps it was in the reference section of a library.

Wow, this book was around during the California Gold Rush, and in the same year the Washington Territory was created from the Oregon Territory. Maybe some of the children in the covered wagons did their schooling from my book. Vincent Van Gogh was born, in 1953, and Napoleon was married that same year. This book on my shelf was published almost 10 years BEFORE the U.S. Civil War began. Did a ten-year-old student worry about his father fighting in Gettysburg while turning these very pages?

Enough pondering. I would so love to hear about some of your favorite old books! I hope you’ll post a comment below, or even send me photos, so we can trade stories.

Used Book Sales

THANK YOU CALGARY CROSSROADS MARKET BOOK SALE (BLACKFOOT AND 26TH AVENUE) FOR HELPING TO SUPPORT SERVANTS ANONYMOUS.

Ever since the end of winter I’ve looked forward to the giant used book sales held every spring. I admit that I go for the joy of being surrounded by so many books and so many book lovers. And this year the shoppers included plenty of young girls and boys who were just as intense and excited as their parents at finding their own treasures. That was a bonus thrill.

I don’t need any more books, of course. I need less books because I’ve started to set stacks of books beside my bookcase. But I do now have a strategy when I go to these sales. I head straight for the “antique” book section, and there I focus on the old children’s books first, and then all the rest. After that, I browse quickly through the other sections, slowing down at the health, Christian and writing books, and settling in at the children’s books.

Last Friday I used some banked time to leave work 2 hours early in order to beat the weekend rush to the first weekend of the SAS sale at Crossroads Market. And the place was already packed!

Here is one of my new treasures:

Have you ever seen anything like this?