yet more about books and shelves
So today I was at the corner thrift store, which I love and fear in approximately equal measure, and I spotted bookshelves. Just like the bookshelves I'm trying to find extra shelves for, though in a different color. And the color? Really, who cares? I mean, I'm not so bourgeois that I couldn't live with different-color shelves in a bookcase.
Consultation with a tape measure revealed, however, that the bookcases in question were 16" deep rather than 12" deep, and the holes for the shelf mechanism were correspondingly too wide. So they don't solve my problem. At this point I swore eloquently, at length, and aloud, which is possibly not the best thing to do in a thrift store named after a saint, but really, I was provoked.
Fortunately, I'd already acquired, for only $1.25, a nice tube pan (angel food cake is now in my not-too-distant future, which of course will mean making a gold cake afterwards to use up the egg yolks); it is perched consolingly on top of the refrigerator.
I consoled myself further by wandering over to the books section.
It's amazing what you can get for $5.43 at a thrift store. To wit:
Susan Cooper, The Grey King. This is my major find for the day. I got the other 4 volumes of The Dark is Rising in a recent used-bookstore run, but this one wasn't on the shelf with the others that day. Today, it was the *only* one of the five on the shelf. And it was a quarter. I haven't read these books since sometime before my junior year of high school. Now that I have them all, they may have to be the next thing I read.
Nicola Griffith, Slow River. One of the many books that I almost purchased a dozen times during my stint at The Bookstore, but never did.
Carolyn Heilbrun, Writing A Woman's Life. When Heilbrun died recently, melymbrosia made me remember that I've been meaning to read this for years and years.
William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes. I really like Howells' Rise of Silas Lapham. Yes, that's right, I am a geek.
Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle In Time, A Wind in the Door, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Another set from childhood that I've been meaning to pick up for some time, and that I've come across quite regularly, but that have never been a priority. For a quarter each, they don't have to be a priority.
Thomas Mann, Death In Venice. See above re: geek.
Christina Stead, The Man Who Loved Children. Another installment in my ongoing attempt to educate myself more thoroughly about the modern British novel. You would think I could do this in graduate school, and in fact I can, as long as I only want to know about novels by men and Virginia Woolf. And now I'm stopping this rant before it starts because otherwise I'll be here all afternoon.
I also saw romances by Jo Beverly and Connie Brockway, but they weren't titles I'd seen mely recommend, so I skipped them.
Now I have to go back to working on a job application. I am genuinely enthusiastic about the possibility of this job, but unfortunately none of that enthusiasm is rubbing off onto the application process, which leaves me hoping that the committee will be sufficiently stunned by my overqualifications that they'll offer me an interview so I can charm them in person. ::sigh::
Consultation with a tape measure revealed, however, that the bookcases in question were 16" deep rather than 12" deep, and the holes for the shelf mechanism were correspondingly too wide. So they don't solve my problem. At this point I swore eloquently, at length, and aloud, which is possibly not the best thing to do in a thrift store named after a saint, but really, I was provoked.
Fortunately, I'd already acquired, for only $1.25, a nice tube pan (angel food cake is now in my not-too-distant future, which of course will mean making a gold cake afterwards to use up the egg yolks); it is perched consolingly on top of the refrigerator.
I consoled myself further by wandering over to the books section.
It's amazing what you can get for $5.43 at a thrift store. To wit:
Susan Cooper, The Grey King. This is my major find for the day. I got the other 4 volumes of The Dark is Rising in a recent used-bookstore run, but this one wasn't on the shelf with the others that day. Today, it was the *only* one of the five on the shelf. And it was a quarter. I haven't read these books since sometime before my junior year of high school. Now that I have them all, they may have to be the next thing I read.
Nicola Griffith, Slow River. One of the many books that I almost purchased a dozen times during my stint at The Bookstore, but never did.
Carolyn Heilbrun, Writing A Woman's Life. When Heilbrun died recently, melymbrosia made me remember that I've been meaning to read this for years and years.
William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes. I really like Howells' Rise of Silas Lapham. Yes, that's right, I am a geek.
Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle In Time, A Wind in the Door, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Another set from childhood that I've been meaning to pick up for some time, and that I've come across quite regularly, but that have never been a priority. For a quarter each, they don't have to be a priority.
Thomas Mann, Death In Venice. See above re: geek.
Christina Stead, The Man Who Loved Children. Another installment in my ongoing attempt to educate myself more thoroughly about the modern British novel. You would think I could do this in graduate school, and in fact I can, as long as I only want to know about novels by men and Virginia Woolf. And now I'm stopping this rant before it starts because otherwise I'll be here all afternoon.
I also saw romances by Jo Beverly and Connie Brockway, but they weren't titles I'd seen mely recommend, so I skipped them.
Now I have to go back to working on a job application. I am genuinely enthusiastic about the possibility of this job, but unfortunately none of that enthusiasm is rubbing off onto the application process, which leaves me hoping that the committee will be sufficiently stunned by my overqualifications that they'll offer me an interview so I can charm them in person. ::sigh::