Feeding My Addiction (old books)

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine sent me these pictures and text message: 

My response: 

And she wasn’t even sorry! 

I had some things to finish first, so it took me about an hour to get out of my house. By the time I got to the sale, someone had purchased two entire bookcases of the books, but there were still many, many titles to go through. 

You see, my obsession with books isn’t just books in general. It’s old books. I love finding gems—especially novels that didn’t last over time for whatever reason. I also love buying books I’ve read but in older printings. I love discovering books on historical subjects published closer to the time they happened. And I love old children’s books—ones I remember from my childhood and ones lost to time. And so I returned home with 10 hardback books and a stack of children’s books. (Note: I could absolutely have bought more, but I used considerable self-control if you can believe it!) 

Before I could even get these on my shelves, we were off to Savannah, Georgia. We’ve visited the city many times but a visit is never complete without a trip to The Book Lady, a used bookstore in a basement space. Oh, the books I’ve found here! 

Last year it was a biography of a Scottish man, Patrick Ferguson, known for inventing a type of rifle used by the British regulars during the American Revolution. (I know, not the book most people would pick up!) This year, I found way too many things I couldn’t leave behind: 

Two writing books I’d never heard of. A book of interviews with British children’s authors compiled in the 1970s, the memoirs of a Tuskegee airman, a diary of a young woman in Virginia during the Civil War, a collection of Dorothy Parker’s poems and short stories, and an old novel (1927) set in Savannah around a story I had just heard on a tour and thought would make a good novel! My husband also picked up Flannery O’Connor’s two novels. (We’ve read her short stories, but not her novels.) 

The thing is, of course, that our bookshelves are basically full! I think maybe I need to cull out my research books to make room for some of these new (old) books. But that’s so hard, because who knows when I might need that information again for another story? 

Thus, we continue to collect books. Which we love. But I also got to see quite clearly at the estate sale what the end of that collecting will be. You see, the woman who had recently died left over 2000 books in her collection. She’d been collecting books since her marriage in 1949. How do I know this? Her children were conducting the estate sale and her daughter told me! 

Someday it will be my children selling 10 hardbacks and a stack of children’s books for $3. But at least I know that whoever buys them will be thrilled to have found them, even if our children don’t appreciate the books we’ve accumulated. 

Do you buy and keep books? Do you search look for old books?