I am preparing my classroom for the next year, so I spent some time out in the school’s storage shed looking for manipulatives and other resources for students. Of course, the booky in me can’t help but look through crates of texts that may be laying about; and, of course, I found a few of those crates in my travels and my nosiness prevented me from staying on task.
In my crate exploration, I found a few copies of The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, and a really interesting copy of The Time Machine by H.G. Welles. It was interesting in that the book art is a blend of minimalist/fantastical, and I had not seen a particular copy like that before. Additionally, I found a decent copy of White Noise by Don DeLillo and an excellent copy of The House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III. Both books are on my “To Read” list.
Last but not least, I found a 1903 copy of Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It’s pretty beat up and the pages have all yellowed, but it’s perhaps the oldest book I own at the moment, aside from a collection by William Wordsworth. Considering we are currently reading a Camelot-themed book on the blog, I thought it was serendipitous.
If you read this blog then you have every understanding of finding old books and why that might be emotionally important to anybody with a taste for writing. With old things come wisdom and respect, and I can respect a book that has stayed in one piece for over 100 years. It’s older than me, it’s older than my parents, it’s older than a lot of things, I suppose. Yet, there is just something about having an ancient text in your collection that gives your book shelf a little more credibility.
