TravellinPenguin

Farewell to the Penguins-Part I

Posted on December 29, 2016 by TravellinPenguin

snip20161229_1 After considerable thought and having way too many books in the house, I have sold my main collection of the Penguin collection. I packed up 13 cartons of the books the other day and a local bookseller has bought the lot of the main series. It is close to 1000 books.I also have removed the small collection of Pelicans I had.

However I continue to save many of the books in the other series of vintage Penguins. I will keep everything else you see listed above, the poets, the classics, the Kings, the Puffins (maybe). I will also keep the ephemera.

I have had too many books that aren’t Penguins packed away in many boxes and in the drawers under the bed. At night I found myself waking up and thinking, “There is too much in this house.” I am approaching the next decade of my life in another three years and I need to get rid of things while I am still able to lift and move things.

When I talked to the store owner I had to fight back tears as I have loved collecting them. I ask myself why I kept them in the first place. Answer: to keep them out of landfill. As many of them came from the Tip shop I have achieved this goal.

I had contacted libraries and a museums but nobody has enough staff to catalogue them all and transportation of 13 cartons to the mainland is too much for me to handle. The cost would also be considerable. The man who bought them is a youngish guy and he loves books, probably more than anyone I know. (outside of myself). He has coveted these books for a long time.

I worry that if I or Mr. P left alone one day, we do not want to have to deal with this massive collection at that time. One must be pragmatic and realistic about the older years.

The exciting thing is the shelves are now filled with beautiful books I have collected that are not Penguins and the books I really do want to read and write about.

I have one whole wall devoted to built in shelves that will keep these books. I have had four additional full size book shelves full of everything else. One bookshelf is in the hallway and has my old book collection which I love. John Steinbeck first editions, Hemingway, Jack London and quite a few other older things. I have collected old hardcover books of dog adventure stories from 1800’s to 1950 longer than I have collected Penguins. I will spend some time with them and share those with you. I collect them mainly for the illustrations that are wonderful. They are books too that I would read.

Of the three bookshelves that are portable in the front library room two of them will be sold. I will have more room now for my computer, desk and furniture. It won’t be so cramped. It won’t be so cluttered.

It is true what ‘they’ say about clutter causing stress. My stress levels were starting to rise as I could not adequately control the amount of books I had. In the past couple of years including the Penguin sales I will have removed about 2000 books from this house. I probably still have between 500 and 800 books left but they all fit comfortably on the shelves. If they don’t fit then they will have to go.

As I read through some of the books I own I will be giving some away through the blog. I won’t need to retain most of them once read. 2017 will focus heavily on my own books. I am looking forward to it.

Part II of this post will talk more about the excellent experiences that have happened to me through this collection.

I will feel sad for awhile but once they are gone I will be happy to begin reading the books that have been in storage for so long and if there is room add a few more??

Obituary, Watership Down

Richard Adams – RIP

Posted on December 28, 2016 by TravellinPenguin

I cannot believe another loved author has died. The news this past year has been full of the death of loved music literary people we cared about deeply.

Richard Adams, author of Watership Down passed away at the grand old age of 96.

I turned on the early morning news and I heard the news. Watership Down was a book many of us read years and years ago as young people. We hadn’t exposure to many books as this ‘back then’ and it left a big imprint.

The story of a family of rabbits, dear Fiver, and the perils they faced. I was only thinking the other day as I sorted through box of books I pulled out of the closet I should reread this book. It has been a long time.

Do others have thoughts on this story?

Do you remember what you were doing in life when you first read it?

Kafka

Tuesday Trivia

Posted on December 27, 2016December 25, 2016 by TravellinPenguin

snip20161225_16 Today I read a bit about Kafka from Prospect magazine. I have had an interest in Franz Kafka since Mr. P. and I visited his house next to the river flowing through Prague. If you are ever in Prague I highly recommend this experience. It is an interesting residence and although sad around the war years as he lost so many of his friends in the concentration camps it taught me a great deal about the man I knew so little about.

Reading this brief article I learned that :

In the summer of 1911, on holiday in Switzerland, Franz Kafka was working on a string of bestsellers. With his friend Max Brod, the 28-year-old writer devised the plan for a quintessentially modern set of books, which could be “translated into every language,” would “energise the whole person” and would provide their creators with “a business venture worth millions.” None of them would contain the man-sized insects, opaque legal machinations, ghastly bureaucratic punishments or anything else for which the name Kafka later became famous. Instead, they were to be a series of stripped-down travel guides for tourists on a budget, which Kafka and Brod intended to call Billig, or On the Cheap.

Armed with a volume of Billig, frugal travellers would enjoy straight talk from Kafka and Brod about decent hotels, fast trains and clean brothels as they travelled “On the Cheap Through Italy,” “On the Cheap Through Switzerland,” “On the Cheap in Paris” or “On the Cheap in the Bohemian Spas and Prague.” “NB the candour of our guide,” wrote Brod in his business plan, next to excited notes on buying “pineapples and madeleines” in the French capital and blagging free exhibition tickets “like a local.” Kafka, meanwhile, promised in his cautious, spidery handwriting that “exact tipping amounts” would be noted throughout. ( Prospect Magazine online)

Sadly this venture never got off the ground as other activities in life took over and the idea faded away.

Can you imagine had it happened how interesting these books would be to read more than 100 years later. I have a hard time imagining travelling around Europe in the years around 1911. WWI started several years later and I suppose that would have probably stopped a great deal of European travel. It was a wonderful idea but it just didn’t seem to be the right time.

For a moment picture yourself …

…sitting in a large armchair. A rainy day where the light is fading. You have a hot mug of coffee or hot chocolate, the dog lies by the fire or the cat in your lap. There is no work in the morning as it is a day off. You turn the pages on travelling through Europe in your favourite city reading a 1911 travel book. The people, the rivers, the food. It hooked me in.