Sit down and I shall weave you a tale
First of all, I think the universe has noticed my imbalance with my current Fry & Laurie fixation, in that I've been paying too much attention to Hugh Laurie and not enough to Stephen Fry. So, I've been pretty sufficiently Fry'd over the past few days. To recap:
Tuesday: Saw Wilde (see my previous entry). Finally started watching Stephen's Twitter.
Today: Went to 3 bookstores and came home with 3 books. All of them were Fry-related in some way. One was The Liar, which he actually wrote, one was the screenplay book for Wilde, and the third was Enter Jeeves. Met with my potential future drama teacher today and when he pulled out the Big Folder of Monologues, the first thing he said was "by the way, do you like Oscar Wilde?" (yes, my natural reaction was "OMG I JUST SAW THAT MOVIE")
I haven't had a good House marathon in a while. Also, note to self: send notices to certain people about the Jeeves and Wooster Drinking Game.
Anyway, getting back to books.
I love bookstores very much and very dearly. I didn't really discover this love for them until a couple years ago when I chanced into a used bookstore in Pittsburgh and found myself very pleasantly charmed. Ever since then, I've ducked into just about every store of the sort I've had the pleasure to run across. Back in those days, I'd noted "I never leave a used bookstore emptyhanded." Naturally, this has changed, what with my tendency nowadays to go to the same bookstores multiple times (I'm thinking of three in particular in Union Square. Strand is the one I frequent the most now). Sometimes, usually if I'm somewhere new, I'll just browse around and pick out what looks interesting. Although it's almost always something that I've heard of before. Lately, I've been going in specifically looking for Wodehouse stuff, with varying degrees of success.
There's something romantic about being surrounded by so many stories, and I don't just mean that in the sense of the stories inside the books. I'm also referring to taking a book, knowing that it has been places, and idly musing about its history. Getting back to Fry and Laurie, let's use some of my most recent acquisitions as examples: The Liar and The Gun Seller (respectively).
Finding The Gun Seller two weeks ago was one of those happy occasions where you don't REALLY expect to find something so specific in a used-book venue that has almost no organization, but fate decrees otherwise. Upon closer inspection, I saw that not only was this a first-printing copy (aka hardcover from 1996) but it had also previously belonged to the New York Public Library. Considering I WORK at the library (Brooklyn, though), I was shocked at myself for forgetting that they do indeed delete books from the system every so often. After taking it home and de-librarying it (cutting off the plastic over the dust jacket and the loose front pages that had the old check-out card pouch on it. Oh wow, I remember when we actually used to still use those), I thought to myself "I wonder how many hands this 's passed through in the last 13 years? It's in relatively good shape, but definitely worn. I can see the cloth parts at the edges wearing and fraying." It was also funny looking at Hugh Laurie's bio in the back and seeing not only a particularly imperious old photo of him but also no mention of House. I felt like I was stripping away something symbolic when I took off that plastic library dust jacket. With it, along with the cutting out of the card pouch, I was removing a lot of its physical history as a library book. I wonder how many people touched that cover? How long was it in the system? There's nothing left to tell of its library history now except for the stamp on the top of the book. During the whole procedure, I had this eerie thought dashing through my head: "I'm now this book's rightful owner and I can do what I want with it."
Flash forward to today. I found The Liar at Strand Bookstore (which is MADE OF HUGE) while consciously looking for something of Stephen Fry's. I took it off the shelf. Again, like The Gun Seller, first-print hardcover. But this one was in a lot sadder shape. The dust jacket was bent and torn in a lot of places. Actually, I almost didn't get it. But then I thought "you know, it needs a good home," because you never know what the pickiness of different people is like when it comes to the condition of used books. At first, the book's condition made me wonder if it had just been handled poorly. Did its previous owner not take care of books very well? When I got home and flipped open the cover, I was surprised to find one of those dedication notes that you usually find in books that were given to other people as presents. This one said, to paraphrase "This is one of the funniest books I have ever read in my entire life." A little embarrassing to own a book with an inscription not intended for me, but it gave me an interesting feeling of reassurance that there was a much higher likelihood that this book had been loved.
The books are sitting next to each other on my desk and are coming with me to Wooster this fall.
I would go on for another couple paragraphs about this (it's great to finally get some of my deeper idle musings written down somewhere), but unfortunately it's getting late. Graduate's Picnic tomorrow! Hope my nose doesn't explode from allergies...
Tuesday: Saw Wilde (see my previous entry). Finally started watching Stephen's Twitter.
Today: Went to 3 bookstores and came home with 3 books. All of them were Fry-related in some way. One was The Liar, which he actually wrote, one was the screenplay book for Wilde, and the third was Enter Jeeves. Met with my potential future drama teacher today and when he pulled out the Big Folder of Monologues, the first thing he said was "by the way, do you like Oscar Wilde?" (yes, my natural reaction was "OMG I JUST SAW THAT MOVIE")
I haven't had a good House marathon in a while. Also, note to self: send notices to certain people about the Jeeves and Wooster Drinking Game.
Anyway, getting back to books.
I love bookstores very much and very dearly. I didn't really discover this love for them until a couple years ago when I chanced into a used bookstore in Pittsburgh and found myself very pleasantly charmed. Ever since then, I've ducked into just about every store of the sort I've had the pleasure to run across. Back in those days, I'd noted "I never leave a used bookstore emptyhanded." Naturally, this has changed, what with my tendency nowadays to go to the same bookstores multiple times (I'm thinking of three in particular in Union Square. Strand is the one I frequent the most now). Sometimes, usually if I'm somewhere new, I'll just browse around and pick out what looks interesting. Although it's almost always something that I've heard of before. Lately, I've been going in specifically looking for Wodehouse stuff, with varying degrees of success.
There's something romantic about being surrounded by so many stories, and I don't just mean that in the sense of the stories inside the books. I'm also referring to taking a book, knowing that it has been places, and idly musing about its history. Getting back to Fry and Laurie, let's use some of my most recent acquisitions as examples: The Liar and The Gun Seller (respectively).
Finding The Gun Seller two weeks ago was one of those happy occasions where you don't REALLY expect to find something so specific in a used-book venue that has almost no organization, but fate decrees otherwise. Upon closer inspection, I saw that not only was this a first-printing copy (aka hardcover from 1996) but it had also previously belonged to the New York Public Library. Considering I WORK at the library (Brooklyn, though), I was shocked at myself for forgetting that they do indeed delete books from the system every so often. After taking it home and de-librarying it (cutting off the plastic over the dust jacket and the loose front pages that had the old check-out card pouch on it. Oh wow, I remember when we actually used to still use those), I thought to myself "I wonder how many hands this 's passed through in the last 13 years? It's in relatively good shape, but definitely worn. I can see the cloth parts at the edges wearing and fraying." It was also funny looking at Hugh Laurie's bio in the back and seeing not only a particularly imperious old photo of him but also no mention of House. I felt like I was stripping away something symbolic when I took off that plastic library dust jacket. With it, along with the cutting out of the card pouch, I was removing a lot of its physical history as a library book. I wonder how many people touched that cover? How long was it in the system? There's nothing left to tell of its library history now except for the stamp on the top of the book. During the whole procedure, I had this eerie thought dashing through my head: "I'm now this book's rightful owner and I can do what I want with it."
Flash forward to today. I found The Liar at Strand Bookstore (which is MADE OF HUGE) while consciously looking for something of Stephen Fry's. I took it off the shelf. Again, like The Gun Seller, first-print hardcover. But this one was in a lot sadder shape. The dust jacket was bent and torn in a lot of places. Actually, I almost didn't get it. But then I thought "you know, it needs a good home," because you never know what the pickiness of different people is like when it comes to the condition of used books. At first, the book's condition made me wonder if it had just been handled poorly. Did its previous owner not take care of books very well? When I got home and flipped open the cover, I was surprised to find one of those dedication notes that you usually find in books that were given to other people as presents. This one said, to paraphrase "This is one of the funniest books I have ever read in my entire life." A little embarrassing to own a book with an inscription not intended for me, but it gave me an interesting feeling of reassurance that there was a much higher likelihood that this book had been loved.
The books are sitting next to each other on my desk and are coming with me to Wooster this fall.
I would go on for another couple paragraphs about this (it's great to finally get some of my deeper idle musings written down somewhere), but unfortunately it's getting late. Graduate's Picnic tomorrow! Hope my nose doesn't explode from allergies...