|
|
|
August 20th, 2006
03:21 pm - The Collector's Dilemma
Every weekend when I go out for to browse places for stuff and things, I usually try to take a quick inventory before I head on out. I gather up all the books I've purchased recently and see how many of them I've actually finished reading. If I have, say, three books recently purchased but not yet read to completion, I begin to think twice or three times before heading on out to buy some more because, well, who wants to create a giant backlog?
"Got stuck" doesn't count as an excuse, even if it's a biography of Boss Tweed and my eyes have officially glazed over with the sheer weight of the numbers when it comes to graft and sinecures and misappropriations and stuff. Stories of colorful corrupt characters are one thing, dry recitation of monetary excesses is another. I was reading it on the T, but man oh man it makes a head spin.
Compilations are also a grey area. Do you have to read every short story? What if one of 'em didn't really appeal to you at the time so you skipped ahead to the hilarious one about the Alsatian? Do you have to go back and read the one you didn't like either?
Anyway I have five outstanding today and I'm only feeling slightly guilty about heading over to McIntyre&Moore for to see if they got anything new in the New England History section. But hey, it's on the way to the supermarket so I might as well.
|
You have to have at least *started* every story in the anthology.
Anthlogies are things that you come back to ten years later and go, "hey, how come I never finished this story? It's great!" I think I can live with this rule. And I have started the two anthologies. One's a Thurber anthology. How can you not take it home and just leave it alone? McIntyre & Moore (at its older location, I think) is where I got a copy of Misner, Thorne and Wheeler's Gravitation for an unbelievable pittance. I will always love that store.
I have snapped up quite a few pieces of goodness from them over the years at very reasonable prices. The three bucks I paid for SJ Perelman's "Chicken Inspector No. 23" was some of the best three bucks ever spent. |
|
|
|
|
LiveJournal.com |
