What, books again?

January's days, swiftly and silently as a cat's paws, are slinking by much too fast...eleven of them already, and still not one book appears on my 2009 Book List!



But that's okay. There are plenty of weeks left in 2009. And it certainly hasn't stopped me from acquiring even more books to read in the weeks ahead. Wildwood and I'll Never Be French arrived within a few days of placing my order; there is still no sign of my Elizabeth Goudge books, though I've received word they are on their way.

Oh, and it's been a very long time since I last visited the One Dollar Bookstore so...what do you think I did this afternoon?

I spent a whopping $5.41 for these five used books.....

A 1940 hymnal of the "Protestant Episcopal Church"
...I like it because it is so little and cute,
and because it includes my new favorite Christmas carol In the Bleak Mid-Winter.

A first edition, published 1950, of The Little Princesses, by Marion Crawford, about her life as governess to the English princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret. She dedicated her book "To the people of America with the fervent hope that our nations may come ever closer together in mutual understanding and sympathy." In researching this book a bit online I came across this article in the Sunday Herald all about what a scandal this book was when it came out in 1950! Wow!

FindArticles - Crawfiegate: The Original Royal Scandal; Scottish governess Marion
Sunday Herald, The, Jan 27, 2002, by Alan Taylor

Margery Sharp's The Gypsy in the Parlor. I read this many years ago, so many that I don't remember the story. Margery Sharp has been a favorite author and I know it'll be enjoyable. A few months ago I re-read Cluny Brown, another of her stories. I saw so much more humor and irony in it this time than I had any understanding of years ago. So I'm expecting new revelations with Gypsy too.

Penelope Lively's The Photograph....yet another English author I enjoyed years ago and hope to do again. There does seem to be a preponderance of English authors on my shelves! It seems most of my favorite authors of fiction are from the UK.

And the classic children's story by Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess. I recently read the following about A Little Princess in Lynne Sharon Schwartz's memoir that explores what the habit of reading means and how it can shape a life with the intriguing title of Ruined by Reading:

In the midst of such confusion, perhaps at about eight or nine years old, I discovered a book that told me more about who I was than anything before or since. That was A Little Princess....and I read it over and over, as children will do with special books. I still return to it every few years; it draws me, the way a certain piece of music or a certain landscape draws people back every so often. Each time it bestows on me, yet again, some crucial knowledge that is all too easy to lose, that the world seems bent on making us forget. (p.47)

With such high praise I am curious to read the story again with all the understanding that 58 years of living brings...I wonder what I'll find! We are never too old to read the stories of our childhood again...especially if we never got around to reading them in our youth. And anyway, many of them are a lot better than some of what passes for "grown up" reading these days.

So...I will now close this post and curl up on the sofa with a cup of tea to finish reading A Joy of Gardening, by Vita Sackville-West (yet another English author!).