Registered: Oct 2001
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Posts: 17889

Took the cam to work today and snapped some pics of my shelves. You really gotta be bored to wanna look at these:

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: the heart of an awl
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i really want that will & ariel durant set.

i found one in perfect condition, $175.

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Registered: Oct 2001
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There are 3 or 4 of those sets in my family. I haven't read every volume, but I almost have. And I've read some of them several times. Caesar and Christ is my favorite, and I imagine I've read it close to 5 times. I just like the way Durant writes; he has a great sense of humor, and he understands what history really is - mostly gossip. I believe that if someone wanted any collection that best explained the nature of Western Civilization as it understands itself, they could do worse than to study that library. Durant, the complete Shakespeare and the Bible would be a basic three for a condensation of the history, literature and spirit of that entity, such that is exists in any real sense.

Another of my favorite set of books that is not shown in the pics is Freeman's "Lee's Lieutenants". It is a study in military command by one of Lee's foremost biographers. It is also a marvelous character study of the leading men of an age who were sacrificed in a bloody lost and misdirected cause. In the war of ideas in which Hamilton won out over Jefferson once and for all, men thought their lives a light burden to lay down for an idea and a way of life. It was a different sort of human being, I think, who could walk upright, face-first into grapeshot and bayonet and feel it the right thing to do. In a lot of ways we're better off for the change. It is, however, still easily regrettable - at least to me. In any case, I love the trilogy, and it brought to life for me what those men were like and what the nature of the conflict was and how that changed over time. It also made more real the sense of loss that was involved. Antietam and Pickett's Charge paid in some measure for the sins of the Confederacy. Sorry. I get a little carried away when I talk about that stuff. I don't think most people think about what really happened in that war.

Anyway, glad ya noticed Will and Ariel.

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Registered: Oct 2001
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I forgot. The other two things not shown that I'm proud of are the Nag Hammadi Library and a couple of copies of the Dead Sea Scrolls translations. I also have an old translation of Sallust on top that you can't really see that is very nicely bound in original type. It has that smell of a book that some of the rest don't. I'm not sure how to explain it, but it smells like a really nicely made book.

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Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Rio de los Brazos de Dios
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Some of those books look vaguely familiar. Not just the titles but the books themselves. Hmmm.

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Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:

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Originally posted by oxsan
Some of those books look vaguely familiar. Not just the titles but the books themselves. Hmmm.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: the heart of an awl
Posts: 3691

hey, let's be fair, here.

raise your hand if your library doesn't contain at least a few klepto "donations."

i thought so.

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