I went down to our Special Collections department this morning, as part of some library tours I was doing for visiting high school students. In the second group, we got to spend about ten minutes down there. I love Special Collections, because I absolutely adore old books.
I got to see a 1584 edition of some sermons by John Calvin.
I got to see a very old (they don’t know how old) Buddhism manuscript that wasn’t in codex form.
And, I got a particular thrill of out this one, because I just got done reading one of his books, I got to see our somewhat spotty collection of All the Year Round. And, wearing cotten gloves, I got to flip through All the Year Round. I found, in the first volume A Tale of Two Cities, and in a later volume, part of Great Expectations. Fun!…in a geeky kind of way. 🙂
Also, as if to confirm by bibliophilic nature, I went and bought about $70 worth of books at the local Waldenbooks. I got the new Robert Jordan, Knife of Dreams, the new Terry Pratchett, Thud! (I got a signed copy of that one), and I got a book by Brandon Sanderson, Elantris.
You and I need to take a field trip up to Idaho Falls and hit B&N. I was there this past weekend– it’s swoon-worthy. Any store that carries *all* of China Mieville’s books i okay by me.Kris