Collier's Junior Classics. and other stories
So, we have a new category .. for anyone who likes to read. I don't watch much TV (except some sports - go CAPS!), but don't get me wrong .. not watching TV doesn't mean I am on some higher plane. I read good books and crappy books, just as most people who prefer TV watch good shows and crappy shows. I still think The Other Side of Midnight is a good book, for crying out loud.
So. My grandma bought Collier's Junior Classics in 1938, for my mom. I think that was already a rewrite; the original was in 1915 or something like that. There are 10 volumes. Poetry, Heroes, Myths, all kinds of things. I devoured those books when I was a child. The one I remember most is one of the poems .. God's Judgement on a Wicked Bishop (I've always been into the macabre .. in 4th grade, when we had to memorize a poem, I chose "The Raven" while everyone else chose the shortest poem they could find). I remembered that poem enough to research its history several years ago and found out that yes, there was a Bishop Hatto, and yes, it was in the times of famine and plague. He didn't burn a bunch of peasants. But the rats did eat the grain and spread the plague.
I volunteer for our local library, and we're having a fundraiser. So I dragged those books out of my basement and they will be valued by an expert - the library has a few experts who volunteer and value the special books. My collection is even more special, because we have the learning guide which goes along with the books (apparently, in 4th grade, you're capable of reading about a wicked bishop who burns his peasants, and is then devoured alive by ten thousand rats). Parents these days would faint at what was considered acceptable reading at various grade levels in 1938. I'll have to copy the reading guide before I donate it (it's bound in plastic so it can be put on a scanner), so I can make the PDF available. But what a great legacy for my grandma, who taught English and passed that love of reading on through our family. Those books she bought for my mom will continue making a difference for other young readers, while helping raise money for our new library in my small town.
Another book I just read - I thought I had read everything by Asimov .. is Robot Dreams. Short stories, at the very beginning of his robot books. The laws of robotics were still scary.
Let's talk books.
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Hi Katrix,
If you want to talk books, there is a group where we have been doing that, and may I suggest that you join it:
I've been doing a lot of reading lately, even reading some books a second time.
Buzz of the Orient
I still have the 1951 Collier's Encyclopedias that my parents bought when I landed on the planet. Still reference them for older material.
Hemingway and Steinbeck are still two of my favorites, ageless.
I still have Jack London's ''Call of the Wild'' given to me by my grandmother in 1950...It's a first edition. Actually I still have the paper (butchers paper) that it was wrapped in.
It stated me on a habit of reading that I have to this day.
Dear Brother Kavika: My first copy of Siddur Yom Yom (daily prayer book) by De Sola Poole was a Bar Mitzvah gift. The prayer book, Tfillin (morning prayer garments) and a Tallit (fringed daily garments) are a standard Bar Mitzvah gift. They came in a pouch with felt and an embroidered Star of David on the front.
The Tefillin are long replaced. They are only good for seven years.
The prayer book I still use at least three times daily (more often if I am at the Batavia Downs race track) even though it is falling apart.
The Tallit I replaced by a gift from Mrs. E. on our wedding. The full prayer shawl given by a bride to her groom is what he wears daily several times at Services. He will also be buried in it.
The Sackit Tallit (embroidered shawl casing bag) I have to this day.
Things given for a life time are kept for all our days on this planet.
Kind of like an indigestible bucket of KY Friend Poultry skin and bones.
Enoch, Not Really Following the Last Sentence I Just Wrote Either.
That happens to me at times niijii....Another close similarity between Indians and Jews....
Dear Brother Kavika: LOL.
Great way to start the week, isn't it?
Enoch (Scratching My Formerly Hair Covered Dome).
Dear Friend Katrix: Fiction: The Collected Short Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer. Collected works of Sholom Aleichem. Everything ever written by William Faulkner and Edgar Allen Poe. Also in the fiction section, every tax return we ever filed.
Non-Fiction. Everything written by Maimonides, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Kurazi by Yehudah Ha Levi, Chovoth Ha Levavoth by Bachya Ibn Pekudah, Business Ethics By Richard T. De George, all the papers by Nagel and Hemphill in philosophy of science on Emergent Properties, Verbal Judo by George Thompson, Shomer Leshoenecha by Rabbi Yisroel Meir Kagen and The Nineteen Letters by Samson Raphael Hirsch.
If anyone who is reading this finds anything I mentioned other than a list of obscure references, kindly send me a note to that effect. Address it to:
Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public
Main Street
Anytown, USA
98.6
Attention: Return to Sender. Address Unknown.
Correction: Yehudah Ha Lewvi's work Sefer ha Kuzari or in Arabic Qitab al Kuzari is the correct spelling of Kuzari.
My apologies for the keyboarding error.
Enoch
The Scarlet Letter.
Taught me so many life lessons that I took into my adulthood. I am sure it was also because I read it under the guidance of a great teacher. Hard to believe it was 6th grade reading. Now our kids know more than we did back then, but they didn't learn it in the classroom.