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  • "Story Books"

    We're not talking here about novels or books of short stories, although those can be "Story Books". This thread is concerned with used books that tell you something about the people who once owned them.

    In our neighborhood it's quite common to find a box of books on the sidewalk with a sign "Free to good owner!" or "Take us home!" Often, these are old textbooks or user manuals for long out-dated technologies. It's a crap-shoot but sometimes you can hit pay-dirt.

    I found a copy of Malachi McCourt's "A Monk Swimming" The book was good but I was more interested in the tribulations of the student who once owned it. This person had real problems with Irish idioms. The book was riddled with underlinings and marginal notes. The inside covers were covered with definitions of such terms as 'Boyo" and 'Bad Cess". The entire book was infested with sticky-notes. For me, "A Monk Swimming" was an easy, if not always appealing read. For that student, it was a total immersion into a world s/he simply couldn't imagine.

    On a lighter note, I found "The Anti-Bride Guide" and the "Anti-Bride Guide Wedding Planner" in another box. The workbook had been partially filled-in. As I read, I learned that the HC was a G*y Male couple. I hope they had a wonderful Wedding celebration and I hope they're as happy as we are in our marriage.

    I'm almost positive that readers of this board have stories of "Story Books" to tell. Please share them.
    Research is the art of reading what everyone has read and seeing what no one else has seen.

  • #2
    Apparently one of the kids who previously rented the library's copy of this particular Asterix book that I got several of for my holiday reading rather fancied him/herself as a budding Goscinny. There are new speech bubbles on some of the pages. Reasonably good stuff too, not overly funny, but fitting within the Asterix world and things the characters were likely to have said.

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    • #3
      I don't know that it tells a story, but my copy of To Kill a Mockingbird is the mass-market movie tie-in edition from about 1964 (too lazy to get up and look). I got it for probably a quarter at a garage sale, and it's pretty well-loved (or just old and falling apart, but since it's one of my favorite books I prefer to think it was well-loved). Not that it'd be worth anything, since it's in such bad condition, but it's pretty cool to have it.
      I don't go in for ancient wisdom
      I don't believe just 'cause ideas are tenacious
      It means that they're worthy - Tim Minchin, "White Wine in the Sun"

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