This just happened to me yesterday, at the library. I was walking around, not looking for anything in particular. I found the most amazing book and read through almost half of it before I ordered it on amazon and a few others by the same author. I also vowed to donate money to the library when I'm rich.
On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places
31–40 of 42 posts
Re: On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places
#32This just happened to me yesterday, at the library. I was walking around, not looking for anything in particular. I found the most amazing book and read through almost half of it before I ordered it on amazon and a few others by the same author. I also vowed to donate money to the library when I'm rich.
What was the book?
Re: On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places
#33A diary entry published in the Paris Review. There's not much about books there, but there is a whole lot of I.
It's a blog post
Re: On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places
#34On one of my trips, I bought a number of copies of a few books and left them in random places as I drove, more or less randomly, around the country. I put an email address in each one, along with a quick note. I got exactly one response. I left copies of: Ishmael; Another Roadside Attraction; Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanence; Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Battle Cry (the formatting kinda sucks) A dozen c…
Reminds me of http://bookcrossing.com which has been around for a while, lets you put an ID number in each book and then you can track it as others find it. I released a handful of books in NZ and London about 10 years ago via bookcrossing
Re: On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ishmael. The reply was more about the note that I'd left than the book itself. Though, they thanked me for the book and felt that it'd be something they might appreciate later in life. They said that it was too deep for them and they weren't able to understand it all. I replied and told them that I'd read it multiple times, at different stages in life, and that I'd not fully understood it either - that I took somethi…
Well, I looked up some reviews on Ishmael because of this discussion, and it doesn't seem quite like what I'm looking for at the moment, but it did cause me to stumble onto "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" which I'm now thinking of picking up. I wonder if anyone here has opinions on it...
Ishmael is well worth reading even if you aren't persuaded by it
Re: On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places
#36I found an old SciFi anthology book as an early teen, I think in a bargain bucket at a Woolworths, called "Adventures in Tomorrow" it contained various short stories set at varying eras in the future, many by authors who went on to be quite famous...
I mentioned this to my wife when I was 50 and she found an original hardback for pennies on Amazon Marketplace and it has re-kindled an enjoyment of fantasy writing that I had all but forgotten due to my incessant reading of manuals and factual texts... I must put aside more time for reading purely for enjoyment!
Re: On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places
#37This just happened to me yesterday, at the library. I was walking around, not looking for anything in particular. I found the most amazing book and read through almost half of it before I ordered it on amazon and a few others by the same author. I also vowed to donate money to the library when I'm rich.
Why not just borrow the library book and donate the money you would have used on the amazon books to the library instead, or donate the amazon books to the library? Maybe next time at least :)
Re: On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a library user it's a pet peeve of mine. If I ever see a book in wrong place, I just put it back where it belongs. There's noting more infuriating than not finding a book and knowing it's somewhere in there.
> If I ever see a book in wrong place, I just put it back where it belongs. A lot of university libraries clearly instruct users not to put books back after taking them off the shelf, because in putting it back "in the right place", they often get it wrong. Instead, one should put it in a designated place for the library staff to shelve it instead.
That's actually good advice. In the event I cannot figure out the classification system, I fallback to this solution.
Re: On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ishmael. The reply was more about the note that I'd left than the book itself. Though, they thanked me for the book and felt that it'd be something they might appreciate later in life. They said that it was too deep for them and they weren't able to understand it all. I replied and told them that I'd read it multiple times, at different stages in life, and that I'd not fully understood it either - that I took somethi…
Well, I looked up some reviews on Ishmael because of this discussion, and it doesn't seem quite like what I'm looking for at the moment, but it did cause me to stumble onto "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" which I'm now thinking of picking up. I wonder if anyone here has opinions on it...
I greatly enjoyed The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Reading it caused me to buy collections of folk tales from several different cultures.
Re: On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Been thinking of dropping off books to the local "neighborhood library" (one of those small unmanned stalls) but I'd been delinquent. You've given me the motivation to get around to it tomorrow; thx.
When I do that, I try to do the opposite of what it seems everyone else does. Namely, I try to give away the good books. It seems most want to keep the good books and give away the not so good books. I try to give away books that I'd want to read.
Yes this occurred to me as well. Luckily I have a few old beat up copies of good books like Catch22.