pumpkinstrokemarrow

My participation had the added advantage that it provided me with an opportunity to consider each book in turn with the hard eye of the culler. A culler who would be quite glad to get the several metres of books lying around on the floors, both upstairs and downstairs, off the floors. And so it turned out: several metres of books have indeed been delivered to the British Heart Foundation skip at our local waste transfer station. Including such gems as my recently collected collection of Oxford Classic Trollope (although I did hang onto the autobiography) and various large, largely unread & certainly old tomes by Prescott on various aspects of Spanish & Spanish flavoured history. Quite a prolific chap considering that had rather dodgy eyesight. So my seven volumes of the life of Churchill have been promoted from the pit to the dress circle (see, for example, November 17th 2010).

Along the way I decided that modern books from the US were much more apt to be decently made than modern books from the UK, most of which were pretty poor. In particular, bindings with decent paper which stay open at the desired page without the need for paperweights, fingers or other devices were apt to be of US origin. Perhaps all part of the big picture where their stuff generally seems to be made to a better specification than ours. That is not to say that it is better value, but it is better.

It also prompted the conceit of using some of my father's book plates for the first time in a long time, thinking it would be fun if my four books by or about my famous namesake E. Toller were adorned with an arty book plate marking the library of one J. R. Toller. An amusement for future browsers of whatever dump they eventually wind up in. The same book plate which prompted an HP failure. That is to say, I have generally been very impressed by the quality of the scanning from my bottom of the range HP printer, bottom of the range in the sense that it was bundled up for free with my HP desktop. However, when I thought to scan the book plate it did not do very well at all. It could not cope with the mixture of heavy black areas and fine black line at all. Looked pretty bad on the screen. I suppose I should persevere and get Jessops to have a go; I believe their scanners to be a touch more serious than mine.

And then the Kindle part of the brain was jogged and more stuff from Gutenberg was loaded up, although I am getting to the point that I am chucking books without bothering to actually load them onto the Kindle from Gutenberg, secure in the knowledge that I could if I wanted to. On the other hand there have been two recent bonuses from browsing, bonuses which would not have accrued had I stuck to load on demand.

First, a couple of short stories from Gogol which I had not come across before: the mantle (which I presume is the same as the story called the overcoat, not really the right word, although it does point up the fact that overcoats used to be worn over other coats, rather than over suits) and the nose. Perhaps the fun poked at government officials tickles the fancy of a retired one of the same. The stuff certainly seems to translate well. Second, one of Trollope's few flights into non-fiction, this one in the form of a biography of Cicero, a chap who I am now learning lived in rough times. The Romans might have been a major stepping stone to our present state of civilisation but they certainly played the game a bit rough. The things that could happen to their own chaps was pretty grim, not to mention what might happen to animals, women, slaves or aliens. But I also learn that many of the issues which diverted the Roman chattering classes were not that removed from those which divert our own, so to that extent it is a pity that our leaders are no longer trained in the classics. Our present leader, I believe, is a PPE man. Don't know about his colleagues.

By way of appetiser, I offer a comment on a famous actor of Cicero's day. "It was a pity that [such] a good man should have taken himself to such a calling". The calling in question being pretty much on a par with street cleaning, grave digging or worse to a respectable Roman. Curious how the luvvies have turned the tables on us, to the point where voice overs for cartoon films are coining it to the tune of millions of dollars a year and where they are accorded respectful audiences by prime ministers. But then Nero was a bit keen on them too.

It was also the case that a respectable Roman should not indulge in retail trade, as success in this sort of trade was bound to involve dishonesty. On the other hand, usury of the worst sort was fine.

PS: I complain in passing that one does not appear to be able to search a blog by date. Presumably the searchers think it enough that entries are presented by date.