2005-06-14 - 1:06 a.m.
A wise elder has asked me a few questions lately. A public answer seems most fitting:
1. # of books I own
2. Last book I bought
3. Last book I read
4. Five books that mean a lot to me.
1. About 350 or so. Such is the problem with displaced people, continuously working in a liminal spaces between various homelands. Most of my library is here, but the rest is in Ottawa. So 350 is a conservative guess.
2. "How to Tell Your Children About the Holocaust" by Ruth Mandell.
3. Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance by Geoffrey Batchen.
4.1 "Famous Letters and Speeches", edited by L. F. Rushbrook Williams.
Given to me by my grandfather when I was about 8. There is no copyright, but I'd date it at around 1940-47 or so. It was published in Bombay, so he must have bought it pre-Independence. It has Socrates, Byron, Keats, Lewis Carroll, a few British Kings, etc., and of course a large section on the contemoprary political figures of British India at the time. In keeping with colonial rhetoric, much
of the book is devoted to famous Anglo-British figures, though. But there
are a few interesting sections: "Love letters" and "Letters of Gossip and
Travel".
4.2 "The Big Book of Bodily Functions". An interesting social text, and always good for a laugh. It has the name of various body parts and functions, as well as the place and date of the naming of those parts and functions. The book is lent out at the moment, but here's a few examples off the top of my head:
Flatulence...Fart..UK, 13th Century. Vomit...Technicolor Yawn....Australia,
1950s.
4.3 "The Poetical Works and Letters of Robert Burns". No copyright, but
noteworthy: 'in this edition the more objectional passages and pieces are
excluded', and 'with copious marginal explanations of the scotch words'.
That's hilarious. No photos, just eight engravings-my guess is mid 19th
century. Best is, I picked it up at an Oxfam store in Henley on Thames, UK,
for.... 1 pound 40 pence.
4.4 "L'imaginaire: psychologie phenomenologique de l'imagination by
Jean-Paul Sartre". Published in 1940, copyright including the USSR. Bought this at a used and new bookstore in Place de la Sorbonne in Paris for only 20 Euros. This store specialized in philosophy, and had sections for different branches-medieval, ethical, classical, etc. I remember browsing the ethical branch extensively, only because I thought the person working there had the most beautiful voice I've ever heard. Her desk was right behind the ethics section. Not that I'm interested in ethics (I used to work for the federal government...ethics..what are those??), but it was a nice way to hear her voice for a few minutes, savour the moment, before I knew that I would never see her again.
4.5 My family photograph album.
