Unlike the annual delivery of hay for my mother’s horse, which it took me years to realize was not coincidentally falling at the same (goddamn) time as my visit home every summer but in fact precisely timed for this, the Lillooet Library book sale and I are just on each other’s wavelengths. I roll in, sweaty, dressed in my summer best (think: shambling uncle on safari) and it assembles itself in the Rec Centre hallway. Like magic.
The thing is, although I talk a good line about loving well-established bookstores, in terms of the sheer thrill of the find, a rainsoaked pile of books on a sidewalk is still the most enticing. The book sale is a solid step up from a pile on the sidewalk, but it still involves browsing through 1980s fad diets, economics textbooks, outdated guidebooks, and a whole lot of Louis L’Amour. And I mean all of that in a good way. This year I also noted an unusual number of books on socialism. Another idealist forced to downsize, I guess.
Here’s what I got:
Giants of Geology: The Story of the Great Geologists by Carroll L. & Mildred A. Fenton (Chapter 1 is called “Fluids and Exhalations” and starts “Sunshine still fires the Grand Canyon’s walls, but they and the turbid brown river now are far away. We sit in the cool north light of a library, scanning maps that recall those early days when the whole occidental world was no more than a fringe surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.” I can’t wait.)
An Introduction to Existentialism by Robert G. Olsen (Because I meant what I said that time about being on the cusp of getting this nailed down.)
The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (because summer)
Wobegon Boy by Garrison Keillor (see above)
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (I have trouble passing up a Penguin classic)
The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee (While I love book books, bookshop books have sometimes disappointed me in the past. I’m hoping this one will come through.)
Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G. Jung (because a new Swiss friend is a Jungian analyst and so now my interest is piqued)
An Area of Darkness and India: A Wounded Civilization by V.S. Naipaul (on their own merits but also because a receipt from 1981 for a night’s stay at a youth hostel in Istanbul and a page of handwritten notes on inseminating cows fell out of one of them and so how could I not?)
The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy (am I the last person in BC to get around to reading this?)
Moosewood Cookbook (because my last one fell by the wayside in the not-divorce)
All that for five dollars. It’s true, I probably will spend my dotage shuffling to rummage sales in a mothy fur coat. One could do worse, right?
