More books

If you’re a librarian, you’ve probably had this experience before: you tell someone you’re a librarian and they respond: “Oh, you must like books!” This always irks me somewhat, but then stereotypes usually do. I often feel a kind of stupid pleasure when I can buck the trend and not match up to the stereotype. Take that other librarian stereotype: librarians are neat and organised. M can attest to the fact that this is not true in my case. In the case of the book thing, however, I do like books. In fact, my liking books contributes to my non-neatness: I have so many that I have messily overflowing bookshelves and too many stacks of books.

But I digress. I don’t really want to write about stereotypes – I just wanted to mention the Save the Children Booksale. There’s one on this weekend:

Save The Children South of the River Branch
Venue: Cannington Exhibition Hall
Albany Hwy, Cannington
7 August 6pm – 9pm
8 – 10 August 9am – 7pm
11 August 9am – 12pm
Books half price on Sunday 10 August and $10 boxes of books on Monday 11 August.

M and I went yesterday after I got home from Dutch class. This one is smaller than the North of the River one and it was very quiet in the hall when I was there, but I enjoyed not having to push against other punters, and I did make a few interesting finds. Books like a two-volume Engels Woordenboek (English-Dutch dictionary) compiled by K. ten Bruggencate and A. Broers, published in both Groningen and Batavia. The first edition, from the preface, was published in 1894, but it looks like I have the 1948 edition, which is the veertiende verbeterde en vermeerde uitgave bewerkt door P. J. H. O. Schut, leraar aan het gymnasium te Breda en Dr R. W. Zandvoort, hoogleraar aan de Rijksuniversiteit te Groningen (fourteenth improved and enlarged edition by P. J. H. O. Schut, master (teacher), Breda gymnasium and Dr R. W. Zandvoort, Professor, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) in 1948. This cost me $9.50. I am not sure if the spelling in this set will have been revised yet, but it doesn’t matter as I will use my more up-to-date dictionaries for most study purposes.

Other interesting finds: by Ntozake Shange, For colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf (what a great title!), by Kit Pedler, The quest for Gaia, by Peter Worsley, The trumpet shall sound: A study of ‘cargo cults’ in Melanesia, and by May Sarton, Journal of a solitude.

The North of the River Save the Children booksale is on in a couple of weeks! I’d thought this sale usually happens in July and that I would miss it this year, so I am well pleased. I do love secondhand booksales; some of my most fun experiences in Amsterdam were the book markets in Dam Square and Spui (and you thought I’d say the coffee shops and the red-light district, right? 😉 ).