Saturday, January 5, 2019

The Secret Lives of Books: the Good, the Bad, and the Antique

Hello friends! How's your new year reading goal coming along? I'm on book two of my 70 book goal and am loving all the reading time this season of school break is giving me. I homeschool our eight youngest children and should probably plan our winter term---but we're all enjoying the break so much, and enjoying some good reads, that I find myself looking for excuses to extend it!

I'm sharing a few neat finds that have been cluttering up my desk since this summer!! (True story!) First up is this cute little book from 1900, Rollo in London. Obviously I bought it for its cover---so pretty! The Rollo series began in the 1830s as a series of illustrations that needed a story put to them, so author Jacob Abbott took up the task.  This book is part of Rollo's Tour in Europe, a series started in the 1850s, with this book being published in 1854.
(There's a lot of interesting info on Jacob Abbott and the Rollo series at this blog.)

Another reason I bought it is because, while flipping through it in the shop, I found this cute Peter Rabbit cartoon inside. It's been there quite awhile as the page has discolored where it sat inside the book. The back of the cutting mentions some kind of shortage, as well as the following phrase: "Olive Oil is prescribed by many leading physicians as a tonic and tissue-builder."

Looks like Rollo visited some pretty fab places---like Windsor Castle!

Next up is a nod to my own dark humor. Do you get it?

This book is called In a Dark Garden and it's by Frank Slaughter...
Sounds downright bone chilling to me!

Then there's this sweet verse I found in a devotional book that was given to me for a yard sale several years ago. (Told you I had this desk clutter for awhile...)

"My Jesus is precious
He is so precious
Jesus is precious to me.
He is my Savior
My Lord and My Master
Jesus is precious to me."

Makes me think of my Grammy Irma and all the sweet songs she wrote down in notebooks we found after she'd passed away.

Finally is this awesome bookmark from 1886. I didn't actually find this---one of my BookCrossing friends sent it to me. Isn't it fabulous? The bookmark is an advertisement booklet for Harper's collection of magazines. "Now is a good time to subscribe," it says.

 
On the back (front?) is this illustration, Coming from the Christmas-tree. 
"Christmas tree" being a relatively new American term and strangely hyphenated. 

The inside of the pamphlet lists all the books published by Harper's for that month, as well as a preview of the next month's books. Lots of well-known, now classic, stories in there!

What kinds of neat things have you found in books lately?

1 comment:

  1. This was very interesting. You should open up a museum. You have some good antiques!

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