0
Yard sailing season is upon us
28 May 2005
Early this morning, Susan and I went to Thornbury for a big fundraiser-yard sale for the Grey-Bruce Habitat for Humanity group. Normally, I'm not really big on yard (garage or trunk) sales... they're too often just collections of used, unwanted junk. I can go on eBay for that, if I want... but this event promised "a thousand" books. I couldn't resist.
In Toronto, before we moved here, we went to yard sales more frequently because they offered more books for sale. Here, in Collingwood over the past 15-plus years, I have seen a lot of kids' items, used household items, some clothes - but few books 9and those we saw mostly romance novels or popular fiction). Only at the annual Mother of All Yard Sales, hosted by the local Optimists' Club, is there any reasonable quantity of books to peruse. It's uncanny and slightly unsettling to go to a yard sale without a single book being offered. Either it's a community of low literacy, or everyone hordes his or her books (unwilling to part with any, as am I). I suspect the former.
I live for books. I read every day. I'd rather read than watch TV. I'd rather read than surf online. At any time I have between six and a dozen books on the go. I pick one up, read a chapter, then pick up the next. I take a book or two everywhere I go - to work, to council, to dinner... in case I have a few moments to read. I have some books I work on over years (like the 12-volume set of Casanova's memoirs I've been reading over the past decade), and others I read straight through without interruption. Sometimes I reread a book for the sheer joy of repeating the pleasure it gave me previously, other times to reinforce the lessons I learned from it.
I read many, many more hours than I watch TV. I watch perhaps five-seven hours of TV a week, mostly an hour a day during dinner, but with meetings many evenings I go many days without any TV at all. I don't like ads and am prone to shutting the TV off when too many ads in a row are show.
On the other hand, I read at least 15 hours a week, at least an hour or two every day. I enjoy sitting on the deck with Susan in the summer, having a glass of wine and reading while the sun goes gown. Every night when we go to bed, I read for an hour or more. I consider watching TV in bed to be a form of mental illness. We have one TV in the living room, and I would rather have my teeth pulled without anesthetic than put a TV in the bedroom.
Sure, I surf online - mostly news, science, politics and sites for my research and self-education. I would rather surf than watch the mindless pablum of most TV shows. Who really thinks Raymond or King of Queens is funny? You'd need a lobotomy to find this sort of drivel entertaining...
Reading is not just a passion: for me it's a defining attribute of our cultural development, of our intelligence, of our personal growth and our wisdom. People who get all of their news, information and entertainment from TV are likely to be uninformed, biased, gullible and basically stupid. TV does that to people: it makes them stupid. It has an unprecedented power to educate and inform and most people seem to waste time on such pap as Survivor, Seinfeld or some other dreary, copycat sitcom.
Here's the bad news for you TV fanatics: those people you see on that piece of furniture you're staring at for hours are not in your living room. And you're not in theirs. In fact, they don't live together at all, they're just in an artificial set created to appear like a home, but it's all a fake. And they're not your friends. None of these people know you, care about you or even give a damn if you live or die. They don't make witty comments - they're actors reading lines written by someone else. You're watching people work, be it Survivor or Seinfeld, they're all just employees of a big Hollywood studio. And that laugh track you follow along with is the producer's indication he or she doesn't think you're intelligent enough to get the jokes, so they prompt you. if you laugh along, you prove them right...
Surveys show that, on average, Canadians watch about 22 hours of TV a week. Americans watch about 33. For the average Canadian, that's a day a week wasted staring at a plastic-and-glass box full of electronic components. That's 52 days a year spent doing nothing, not exercising, not riding your motorcycle, not going for a walk, not reading, not playing with the kids, not gardening, not being romantic with your partner... just sitting. In just seven years, TV will have claimed a full year of your life, a lost year you will never be able to get back. When you die, if you live to the normal span of years, you will have wasted an entire decade watching TV - at least a year and probably more of that watching nothing but advertising - a decade you could have used to travel, explore, experience, interact, play, talk with friends and neighbours, read, meditate, and love. All gone, a decade spent sitting on the couch looking at an inanimate box instead of living.
But I digress. Back to the yard sale... the organizers may have underestimated the quantity of books. And the quality - there were some real treasures here (to me, anyway).
I managed to put together a large box of books from the numerous tables of books in a few minutes, while Susan was also filling one for herself. I love it that she is as passionate a reader as I am. Different material, different authors, but she loves to read. And that binds me to her all the more.
One box led to another, then another... pretty soon we had four boxes overflowing with books, everything from history textbooks to modern thrillers, from paperback novels to Shakespeare. The woman at the cash-out looked surprised when I dropped the first large box at her station and asked her to watch it. By the fourth she was bewildered. I only stopped because the task of carrying them to the car was becoming daunting.
"You have too many books," she sputtered. "Nonsense," I replied. "One can never have too many books." "But where will you put so many?" "Everywhere. A house without books is a house without a soul." "Are you going to read them all?" "Maybe. Maybe I'm just saving them from the dustbin."
That yard sale was a treasure trove. I found a 1926 illustrated copy of Bulwer-Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii, a one-volume edition of Dante's Inferno, Thackery's Vanity Fair (which I've wanted to read ever since seeing the movie), Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker (although I read his original, I haven't read anything else he wrote), two books on English usage, a book on Egyptian archeology, a book of Goethe's poems, a PG Wodehouse omnibus, a book of essays on post-revolutionary Cuban culture, a book on Bermuda's plant life with beautiful hand-painted illustrations, Colin Powell's autobiography, Woody Allen's biography, Rafael' Sabatini's Captain Blood, numerous modern novels, several novels by Dickens, Steinbeck and Atwood, some "Pick of Punch" dating from 1940 to 45, a children's illustrated Robinson Crusoe hardcover from the 1940s, Virgil's Aneid, the mediations of Marcus Aurelius in a volume with selections from Plato, Suetonius and others, a book on biotechnology, a book of essays on post-millennial pop culture (that's 2001-on for those with a mathematical learning disability), several Penguin paperbacks on such diverse topics as Greek myths, the history of Africa, Tudor England and the Industrial Revolution... plus others on England, history, travel, biology and more...
Four boxes of books. Of course, we don't have enough shelf space at home to accomodate them all - we haven't had space for years. All our many bookshelves are already overflowing, stacked two or three deep, with books piled on the top, some large titles relegated to the floor... several thousand books already competing for space. I'll need to add another large shelf, but where? Already almost every room and most hallways have their bookcases and bookshelves. Only the washrooms remain uncluttered (although we do put books on the toilet tanks for reading on the throne).
I don't buy books for their resale value or collectibility. I buy books to read. I buy them for the information, for their entertainment value, for their intrinsic value. I used to have a small collection of Napoleonic-era books, but I sold them - today I collect books for their worth as sources of learning or pleasure. For me, books are worth considerably more than I pay for them.
Today was one of those rare days that make yard-sailing a joy. I came home with four boxes of books, and a lifetime of enjoyment. Susan had a box of books, plus several new jigsaw puzzles. It was a very, very good day.
In Toronto, before we moved here, we went to yard sales more frequently because they offered more books for sale. Here, in Collingwood over the past 15-plus years, I have seen a lot of kids' items, used household items, some clothes - but few books 9and those we saw mostly romance novels or popular fiction). Only at the annual Mother of All Yard Sales, hosted by the local Optimists' Club, is there any reasonable quantity of books to peruse. It's uncanny and slightly unsettling to go to a yard sale without a single book being offered. Either it's a community of low literacy, or everyone hordes his or her books (unwilling to part with any, as am I). I suspect the former.
I live for books. I read every day. I'd rather read than watch TV. I'd rather read than surf online. At any time I have between six and a dozen books on the go. I pick one up, read a chapter, then pick up the next. I take a book or two everywhere I go - to work, to council, to dinner... in case I have a few moments to read. I have some books I work on over years (like the 12-volume set of Casanova's memoirs I've been reading over the past decade), and others I read straight through without interruption. Sometimes I reread a book for the sheer joy of repeating the pleasure it gave me previously, other times to reinforce the lessons I learned from it.
I read many, many more hours than I watch TV. I watch perhaps five-seven hours of TV a week, mostly an hour a day during dinner, but with meetings many evenings I go many days without any TV at all. I don't like ads and am prone to shutting the TV off when too many ads in a row are show.
On the other hand, I read at least 15 hours a week, at least an hour or two every day. I enjoy sitting on the deck with Susan in the summer, having a glass of wine and reading while the sun goes gown. Every night when we go to bed, I read for an hour or more. I consider watching TV in bed to be a form of mental illness. We have one TV in the living room, and I would rather have my teeth pulled without anesthetic than put a TV in the bedroom.
Sure, I surf online - mostly news, science, politics and sites for my research and self-education. I would rather surf than watch the mindless pablum of most TV shows. Who really thinks Raymond or King of Queens is funny? You'd need a lobotomy to find this sort of drivel entertaining...
Reading is not just a passion: for me it's a defining attribute of our cultural development, of our intelligence, of our personal growth and our wisdom. People who get all of their news, information and entertainment from TV are likely to be uninformed, biased, gullible and basically stupid. TV does that to people: it makes them stupid. It has an unprecedented power to educate and inform and most people seem to waste time on such pap as Survivor, Seinfeld or some other dreary, copycat sitcom.
Here's the bad news for you TV fanatics: those people you see on that piece of furniture you're staring at for hours are not in your living room. And you're not in theirs. In fact, they don't live together at all, they're just in an artificial set created to appear like a home, but it's all a fake. And they're not your friends. None of these people know you, care about you or even give a damn if you live or die. They don't make witty comments - they're actors reading lines written by someone else. You're watching people work, be it Survivor or Seinfeld, they're all just employees of a big Hollywood studio. And that laugh track you follow along with is the producer's indication he or she doesn't think you're intelligent enough to get the jokes, so they prompt you. if you laugh along, you prove them right...
Surveys show that, on average, Canadians watch about 22 hours of TV a week. Americans watch about 33. For the average Canadian, that's a day a week wasted staring at a plastic-and-glass box full of electronic components. That's 52 days a year spent doing nothing, not exercising, not riding your motorcycle, not going for a walk, not reading, not playing with the kids, not gardening, not being romantic with your partner... just sitting. In just seven years, TV will have claimed a full year of your life, a lost year you will never be able to get back. When you die, if you live to the normal span of years, you will have wasted an entire decade watching TV - at least a year and probably more of that watching nothing but advertising - a decade you could have used to travel, explore, experience, interact, play, talk with friends and neighbours, read, meditate, and love. All gone, a decade spent sitting on the couch looking at an inanimate box instead of living.
But I digress. Back to the yard sale... the organizers may have underestimated the quantity of books. And the quality - there were some real treasures here (to me, anyway).
I managed to put together a large box of books from the numerous tables of books in a few minutes, while Susan was also filling one for herself. I love it that she is as passionate a reader as I am. Different material, different authors, but she loves to read. And that binds me to her all the more.
One box led to another, then another... pretty soon we had four boxes overflowing with books, everything from history textbooks to modern thrillers, from paperback novels to Shakespeare. The woman at the cash-out looked surprised when I dropped the first large box at her station and asked her to watch it. By the fourth she was bewildered. I only stopped because the task of carrying them to the car was becoming daunting.
"You have too many books," she sputtered. "Nonsense," I replied. "One can never have too many books." "But where will you put so many?" "Everywhere. A house without books is a house without a soul." "Are you going to read them all?" "Maybe. Maybe I'm just saving them from the dustbin."
That yard sale was a treasure trove. I found a 1926 illustrated copy of Bulwer-Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii, a one-volume edition of Dante's Inferno, Thackery's Vanity Fair (which I've wanted to read ever since seeing the movie), Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker (although I read his original, I haven't read anything else he wrote), two books on English usage, a book on Egyptian archeology, a book of Goethe's poems, a PG Wodehouse omnibus, a book of essays on post-revolutionary Cuban culture, a book on Bermuda's plant life with beautiful hand-painted illustrations, Colin Powell's autobiography, Woody Allen's biography, Rafael' Sabatini's Captain Blood, numerous modern novels, several novels by Dickens, Steinbeck and Atwood, some "Pick of Punch" dating from 1940 to 45, a children's illustrated Robinson Crusoe hardcover from the 1940s, Virgil's Aneid, the mediations of Marcus Aurelius in a volume with selections from Plato, Suetonius and others, a book on biotechnology, a book of essays on post-millennial pop culture (that's 2001-on for those with a mathematical learning disability), several Penguin paperbacks on such diverse topics as Greek myths, the history of Africa, Tudor England and the Industrial Revolution... plus others on England, history, travel, biology and more...
Four boxes of books. Of course, we don't have enough shelf space at home to accomodate them all - we haven't had space for years. All our many bookshelves are already overflowing, stacked two or three deep, with books piled on the top, some large titles relegated to the floor... several thousand books already competing for space. I'll need to add another large shelf, but where? Already almost every room and most hallways have their bookcases and bookshelves. Only the washrooms remain uncluttered (although we do put books on the toilet tanks for reading on the throne).
I don't buy books for their resale value or collectibility. I buy books to read. I buy them for the information, for their entertainment value, for their intrinsic value. I used to have a small collection of Napoleonic-era books, but I sold them - today I collect books for their worth as sources of learning or pleasure. For me, books are worth considerably more than I pay for them.
Today was one of those rare days that make yard-sailing a joy. I came home with four boxes of books, and a lifetime of enjoyment. Susan had a box of books, plus several new jigsaw puzzles. It was a very, very good day.
