Sunday, April 22, 2012

Buying a Small Piece of Heaven

I went to the Crumpacker Family Library Book Sale.

Entering the Crumpacker Family Library always makes me want to run around like Julie Andrews and sing, "The Hills Are Alive" - only my song would be about how the hills are alive with books books books BOOOOKS! - and then read a book while seated on a ceremonial throne.

Before the doors opened, I met a painter, and we started talking about her paintings and how I hoped I'd run into a really good book on Paleolithic art.

Then the doors opened and I told myself that I wanted to look for books on Paleolithic art and oh, look interior arts -- and no, you're writing Steampunk, so - hey! Art Nouveau! and Oh! 7000 years of Iranian Art!

No. Focus focus focus Burridge! You're writing about fantasy and steampunk and you need to look at source work for the ... ooooh! a book on silver tableware! That's Steampunk, or at least fantasy....

Finding a scholarly book on art that's at a nice price which makes my heart bubble over with bibliophilic avarice.

Everyone was very polite. I helped someone find a book on interior design and the painter's friend handed me a book on European Art History. We were all enablers.

When I think of heaven, it's filled with books. When I think of buying a little bit of heaven, I go a little crazy with divine badness. That was a Freudian slip of the fingers there, but it's probably more correct to say "divine badness" because I really only meant for this to be a dry run on what I would do at the book sale next year -then next thing I knew I had a really huge, heavy stack of older books.

Which I bought.

And they're all my favorite. And I want to read them all. And I can use them for research. And I'm not sure where they will fit on my home shelves. But I am pretty sure Mark is going to start laughing in a few minutes when I walk out of the building with two shopping bags full of second-hand art books.

[editor's note:  He did.]

1 comment:

Ryffnah said...

This is exactly why I try to stay out of bookstores. They are far too much fun.