Tracking incoming books - Ruth - 2025

I made slight progress last year with reducing my library.
It’s not a good sign that I’ve acquired three and disposed only one in the first few days.

Came in the mail:
I’m Dead. Now What? - I’m of that age that it doesn’t hurt to consider these things.
In WV, I did stop in a used bookstore and didn’t buy any books.
But stopped at HalfPrice in Lexington and picked up two:
The Wind In The Willows illustrated by Nick Price. I think I’ve encountered him before, but plan to dive in and enjoy.
Falling Free - marked as read but unowned. Looking forward to enjoying it again.

I’m minusing the Nick Price WITW book here, because I already have it. I missed finding it my catalog at the store because it is an adaptation, and I didn’t look far enough.

First class session was yesterday, and a new syllabus was passed out. Hmmm. Different texts.

Had to order Democracy in Retrograde and March Trilogy. I don't mind having these; they look very on point.

Two others from the old syllabus are still on the list.

I’m disenchanted with these new textbooks. Democracy in Retrograde keeps referring to teen magazine questionnaires and I’m afraid they use those as templates. They even have sparklies in the section headings.
March Trilogy are graphic novel format! Groan! I did choose well from AbeBooks. I got the slipcased hardcovers all for less than individual volumes. These are not keepers. They will be quickly donated either to the professor or the library, which lacks both.

March has won multiple awards though, such as a National Book Award. Which seems different from something that contains sparkles?

>5 reconditereader: March is by Former US Congressman, John Lewis, of GA, who died in 2020. The man was a true American hero. The son of poor, Black, Alabama sharecroppers, he found his mission in life listening to Dr Martin Luther King, Jr on the radio. He later met Mrs. Rosa Parks. He was denied admission to university in Alabama because it was segregated. He didn't fight it because it would have put his family in too much danger. Instead, he went to the Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, where he became a founding member of the Student Non Violent Co-ordinating Committee, along with Diane Nash, another hero of the movment. Trained in non-violence, he withstood multiple beatings and death threats during lunch counter sit ins and later, as a Freedom Rider, integrating buses from NOLA to Washington, DC. He was on the front line during the Selma to Montgomery march, where he was knocked unconscious as angry white policemen attacked marchers on the Edmond Pettis Bridge. He remained dedicated to non-violent protest all of his life and was a moral force in Congress for decades. March is his memoir. He won the National Book Award for young people's literature for vol. 3 in Nov. 2016, just weeks after that year's election. His acceptance speech WILL make you tear up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqmYNOPVyO4

>6 TerryMcKenzie: Thanks for the lecture. It’s not the content I have issues with. As a matter of fact, I am collecting materials concerning “resistance.” It’s the format. It’s a poor choice for conveying classroom relevant information. And it is not friendly to my 70 year old eyes.

Not a lecture. I'm 65 myself, and I've been a John Lewis fangirl my entire life. I rewatch his acceptace speech often. I was befreft when he died. Also: I am not much of a graphic novel fan but, as a decades-long career as a bookseller/publishing sales person, I have been won over to their ability to teach history and science and to tell important stories to people who have a more visual learning style than my own. I always forget to look at the pictures in the frames.

January - 7, which includes the one that came in today’s mail
Entangled Life. I was so reluctant to return this to the library that I ordered my own copy from AbeBooks. I haven’t read it yet, just browsed the gorgeous gorgeous photos.

And I also already donated one from >4 2wonderY:.

I met my Cinci daughter in Lexington, which is half way between. Half Price Books is the established meeting place. I did buy three books, but none of them was for me. So they don’t count.
I bought a second copy of Entangled Life for daughters to share.
Trina Schart Hyman’s Little Red Riding Hood was for T.
Brock, in dyslexic-friendly font, is for granddaughter Liv.
😊

At Goodwill today, Where on Earth? Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals, a DK book. Again, for T, so doesn't count. This shows all the species she knows, but with the addition of maps to show their geolocations.

Across the Universe for me.

Well, I meant to get the original OSS Field Manual.
But what I got was Simple Sabotage, meant for businesspeople. The cover was misleading, but still offered clues.

Class reading and discussion about INTOIT moments, where your view of things shifts radically, reminded me of Surprised By Truth. I saw from my catalog that I had read it but not owned it.
Remedied that and saw there were two sequels. So also bought Surprised By Truth 2.

My real copy of Simple Sabotage Field Manual was on my porch this morning under a layer of snow. How’s that for sneaky!
This is a 2023 reprint by Origami Books.

An unscheduled addition. A poet came and read some of his work on campus today.
The end of ‘Enbarassing’ is powerful:

“Embarrassment is a tactic of war / in which we teach the other / to destroy themselves / while we can say / that our hands / are clean.”

Glad to support him and bought Gay Poems for Red States.

Mail call!
For distribution to beloved family members
Time Travelers Strictly Cash
The Complete Brambly Hedge

Two core authors on extended family shelves.

The documentary the Biggest Little Farm is stunningly beautiful, excellently plotted and all around feel-good. Added it to my collection.

Also acquired the film Enchanted April, found at Goodwill.

I’m listening to the new biography of Frederick Douglass by David W. Blight. I am discontinuing because I can’t commit to 37 hours (!!!).
But I listened long enough to discover where his core inspirations came from and managed to obtain a copy of the 1817 The Columbian Orator, a schoolboy text of the time.

I ordered my own copy of How We Learn to Be Brave before both of my libraries bought copies. After reading it, I don’t need to keep it. I will donate it to the bell hooks center library shelf.

Also arrived today - Countrymen, an excellent story of resistance.

>19 2wonderY: Countrymen looks interesting. My maternal grandfather was an immigrant from Denmark.

ETA: ha! I already had it on my "Recommended to me" list, and guess who recommended it?

>20 fuzzi: I believe you told me that when I read it about 8 years ago. You should find a copy!

Multiples for $7 on AbeBooks

>21 2wonderY: memory like a sieve here. :grin:

I'm going to check the used book store first, as I'm probably going to retire later this year and am trying to not overspend.

I’m buying multiples of Youre More Powerful Than You Think for distribution in the community.
A pile of them arrived yesterday.
Mixed in with them was a copy of The Gardens of Democracy
and Birding By Ear, because I gave my copy to an old friend.

Daughter reacquainted herself with the Brambly Hedge stories and later asked the name of the mouse with the great wardrobe. I picked up two Vera the Mouse books for her, and for myself, Posh Coloring Book Inspired by Nature, also by Bastin. It might get me to pull out my art materials and play.

I may have missed a few incoming recently.

Today was a Yard Sale day in my neighborhood. So I took a walk.
I met a princess on the corner and we chatted for some time. She introduced me to Basil and a second dog, but I didn’t catch his name. Her name is Wren and her parents were busy getting ready for a birthday party. Wren’s birthday is just one day after mine.

At the first church yard sale, I found 5 books.
March of the Penguins is full of adorable photos. I slipped it over the fence for Wren.
I brought home
The River Bank, a sequel I might have seen before but hadn’t cataloged.
The Wedding: 150 years of down-the-aisle style. It’s full of adorable photos😁
NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards - hey, ya never know.
And a Better Homes and Gardens style book for Baths. This is going to daughter.

Oh, and I brought lunch home from the Mexican church on the corner.

Dang! The college library has a whole area again devoted to free texts from courses. I managed to come away with only three. The Sum of Us, which I’ve wanted to read anyway.
American Constitutional History, a good topic in todays political climate.
And Adam Smith and Ayn Rand (not touchstoning). I keep leaning into economic philosophy.
Oh and I recently bought Eucharistic Miracles because I didn’t locate my book on the subject quickly enough.

I’ve been extremely lax counting books coming in.
But last week I snatched up two pre-1950s hardcover romances. They were at the Salvation Army store and are in nearly pristine condition, with dust jackets intact. Someone bought and read them and shelved them till a descendant was clearing out the old homestead.



and

I did a swap with Anne. I gave her two doll clothes books and she gave me One-Yard Wonders

Added to my shelf on garden narratives, my own copy of the obscure My Summer in a Garden.

And heartily wishing this book, Double Take was a larger format AND that I could lay hands on his other book. His photos are supposedly candid. They are amazing.