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Top Ten Tuesday is an original bookish meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week a new top ten topic is posted for followers to write about. This week we are asked to list our "Top Ten Books to Save If the House Were Abducted by Aliens (or some other disaster)". So...I own over 2000 books....and I'm really supposed to choose only ten to save? I'm afraid I'm mostly going to have to choose Ten Groups of books to save from the Inferno (or other imminent danger).
1. All of my Dorothy L Sayers books--especially the special editions of Lord Peter. That includes a first edition, hard-back British Whose Body? and a special Armed Forces edition of Busman's Honeymoon and a couple of WWII pocket size editions that I will probably never find again in used book stores.
2. Speaking of pocket size editions. I love those little square-shaped books. Must save all of those--the whole shelf.
3. All of my signed editions. Most of these are not signed by famous authors. Rather, 90% of them are signed by authors I know personally and whose books are all the more special because the authors are my friends.
4. A Sprig of Sea Lavendar by J. R. L. Anderson. Is it a great book? I have no idea--I haven't read it yet. But it had been on my must-find list For-ev-er. And my mom-in-law just found it for me this past Christmas at a used bookstore in Florida. Must save it since it was so difficult to find.
5. All of my Frances & Richard Lockridge books. I have a near-complete set...I certainly don't want to have to start collecting all over again.
6. All of my hardbound S. S. Van Dine mysteries--nearly all are first editions in fine to near-fine shape. Don't want those going up in smoke.
7. Beverly of Graustark by George Barr McCutcheon and Laddie: A True Blue Story by Gene Stratton Porter. Two very old editions that also have a great deal of sentimental value. My grandma got these for me--Beverly she picked up simply because that's my name and she thought it would be nice to give me a namesake book. Beverly is in great shape...Laddie, not so much--but I loved it when I was growing up and wouldn't want to lose it for anything.
8. Thomas Moore's Complete Poetical Works. Again, not the greatest poetry on earth--but it is the edition that makes it worth saving. It's what I call my "puff book." It's covered in an interesting, off-white, "puffy" material. When I was growing up, I used to covet it....it sat for years on a shelf in Mason's Rare & Used Bookstore downtown. Finally, one of my best friends arranged for me to have it.
9. Set of 6 Nancy Drew books that were my mom's. They were a Christmas gift to her from her mom and she passed them on to me when she realized she had a reader on her hands.
10. All of my Bibles...they all have been given to me by special people and have additional meaning beyond spiritual.
and I had to add an extra level...
11. The rest of the 1st edition vintage mysteries that I own. If you absolutely insist that I wouldn't have time to save all of these books...then I'll just grab one at random. And then stand outside and cry when I think of the others that I couldn't save.
I only have a few things that I have spent time collecting specifically. It sounds like you have a lot. My mom had a big collection of Nancy Drew's and I wish I had ended up with more of those.
ReplyDeleteThere's no way I could choose only ten from my enormous collection. But like you, Bev, I'd go for those that have sentimental value like the very first book ever inscribed to me by an author I met when I was in the 5th grade. I'd also have to save the valuable rarities like the first few treasures Joe and I found at books sales decades ago that turned out to be valued at between $750 and $1500. No stinkin' alien is gettin' those!
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