Books in the mountains

This past week the weather has been so very cold that it has dominated the news.  It was colder in the state of Wisconsin than in Antarctica.  The wind chill factor in Chicago, Illinois, plunged temperatures down to -54 F (-47.7 C.)  Below are some photos of frozen Lake Michigan in Chicago, courtesy The Evening Express.

In other news, the US Government was reopened temporarily for 3 weeks with funding through  February 15, 2019.  Another news item which would have been known, if it had happened to the royal family in the UK, was hardly mentioned because it concerned France: Henri d'Orleans, Count of Paris and pretender to the defunct French throne, died on Monday 21 January, 2019; he was 85 years old.  The royalty was abolished during the French Revolution of 1789.  French King Louis XVI went to the guillotine on the same day but 226 years earlier - 21 January 1793.  Henri d'Orleans' funerals will take place at the Royal Chapel Saint-Louis of Dreux on February 2, 2019.  He was a direct descendant of the Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV (after whom New Orleans, Louisiana, is named.)  Henri d'Orleans's son, Prince Jean de France, inherits the title.  However another pretender to the French throne is the descendant from the royal house of Bourbon, Louis Alphonse de Bourbon.  A third pretender is Jean-Christophe Napoleon, or Prince Napoleon, descendant of the Bonaparte family.  But not to worry, I don't think the French people will vote to recognize a royal throne in France and nominate one of these three men ...

Reading about the government shutdown and Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, I realized that she is my date of birth sister.  Nancy Pelosi was born on the same day, same month and year as me - 26 March 1940.  I like to have strong birthday sisters.  I checked to see if any other strong women were born within a couple of days of March 26 and found Gloria Steinem, the feminist and journalist and Aretha Franklin, the singer and civil rights activist were both born on March 25 (1934 and 1942.)  Lady Gaga, also a singer and songwriter, was born on March 28 (1986.)  Another birthday, sad this one, is of my late husband as he was born on February 2nd.  He was proud to have been born on the popular holiday Groundhog Day.  On February 2nd, when the groundhog comes out of his den, if he sees his shadow, it is believed six more weeks of winter will follow.  Below is a groundhog.

 But my post is about books.  I have been an avid reader since I was a wee-child.  In France, in primary school through high school, kids were rated monthly according to grades: if there were 28 kids in a class they were rated 1st of the class to the last one (am not sure if it is still the same.)  My mother would give me two new books if I was the first of the class, one book if I was second and none after that.  So I tried very hard to be first and was most of the time.  I accumulated many books, mostly from the green book series "La Bibliotheque Verte," red and gold series "La Bibliotheque Rouge et Or" and pink series "La Bibliotheque Rose" created in 1856.  As a child my favorite stories had been written by the Countess of Segur, born Sofiya Feodorovna Rostopchina in St. Petersburg, Russia (1799-1874.)  I think I still have some of these books.  I just checked and some have become "rare" I guess.  The green book Melle de la Seigliere below is worth more than 20 euros, and my Little Lord Fauntleroy in French is worth more than 35 euros in France, both from the 1940s.  I guess I'll have to sell them back in France rather than donating them to Goodwill here.  Below are samples of my old books plus an illustration from Countess of Segur's "Les Petites Filles Modeles" (Good Little Girls) written in 1858.  (Click on collage to enlarge.)

When I arrived at the port of New York in 1961, I remember the US Customs officer asked me if I was a student because one of my steamer trunks was full of books.  I had taken many with me but not all of my French books.  When I married my husband he brought his book collection and I brought mine - we had many books but hardly any furniture.  Through the years we collected another large amount.  We placed them in bookshelves in each room of our house.  He loved to go to second-hand bookstores.  I don't think a week went by that we did not buy at least one book for us or later on for our daughters.  Once, in New York City - I think it was back in 2007, we walked by the St. Agnes Public Library on Amsterdam Avenue at West 81st Street (an old library branch opened in 1906.)  They had a sign saying there was to be a library sale the next couple of days because the library was going to be renovated.  The next two days we were supposed to go out of New York to visit West Point, but instead my husband insisted that we stay for the sale ... we did buy quite a few books then had to get a large cardboard box and mail it to our house.  Below pictures of the renovated St. Agnes Public Library in New York City, courtesy NYPL.

Toward the end of my husband's illness he would constantly count his books and place the numbers on little yellow stickers.  He also would hide documents, money and what not in the books, so now I have to carefully go through them.  I bought many second-hand books at estate sales, library sales and through Amazon and ABE Books.  My husband would love to walk down to the mailbox and if there was a book there he would take it, look at it, place it somewhere without telling me then quickly forget.  I still find many old books that I ordered and never had a chance to see or read, such as those below I found last week.  I just realized that I had bought the second-hand book below "Dinner at Belmont" by Alfred Leland Crabb (published in 1942) some years ago before I knew I would move to Nashville, just a few blocks from Belmont Avenue.  It deals with Nashville's most eventful years, 1858 to 1865.  I am pleased that I re-discovered it.  There was also the book "Elizabeth and her German Garden" by Elizabeth von Arnim, published in 1901, that I could not find on the shelves as well as the writings of Thomas Paine, book published in 1945.  They were behind his western books.

I also found more lost books that he had placed in weird places.  I show them under my lamp in the heading photo.  Below is a close up so you can read the titles.  I have never read "For Whom the Bells Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway but am not sure if I want to read this paperback published in 1949, with yellow pages and tiny print.  I think I had bought it at an estate sale about 5 years ago.

If we drove through a small town and went by a second-hand bookstore, we had to stop.  I had found a route through the Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia to avoid going through Chattanooga.  I mentioned it on my post On the Road Again in Tennessee and Georgia in 2011. The little town of Trenton, GA, located at the border of Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee, had one second-hand bookstore.  We stopped several times but their inventory was not extensive.  A while back I remembered that bookstore and called them to see if they would be interested in purchasing some of our books.  It turned out that the store had been sold and the new owner was eager to buy books to replenish his stock.  Last September I brought 100 western paperbacks to Trenton from my husband's collection.  I brought more books in November, December, and last week in January.  Below is a picture of the bookstore with a view of the town around it (Trenton population is approx. 2,500.)  Trenton is in a valley in the Appalachian foothills surrounded by mountains: Lawson Mountain, Fox Mountain, Windy Mountain, Little Cedar Mountain, Raccoon Mountain, Lookout Mountain and more.

I watch the weather when I drive to Trenton on my way to Nashville because the road, SR136, meanders through hills and hollows.  It has many curvy turns and steep hills through the canyons and mountains.  It is scenic.  You can see the beautiful landscape while on top of one of the mountains but can't stop (or might fall down the cliffs!)  My husband used to take pictures from the car while I drove.  Bottom right picture is Trenton in the valley, taken from Sand Mountain.

When I am back in Georgia I go through all my late husband's books to select those to bring to Trenton (next will be my books, later on ...)  They are scattered throughout the bookshelves.  I had already donated about 1,000 books to the Cobb County Library in GA and the Goodwill there.  I am not sure how many books there are left, maybe 8000 or more.  The shelves are not in order.  Also the shelves in Nashville need to be re-arranged.  Some of the books were placed in moving boxes and taken to Nashville before I had a chance to look at them first.  My eldest daughter tried to help by placing many on the shelves, but one of top of the other, two rows deep, and it is difficult to see their titles - some are my husband's books, some are mine and some I did not want any longer.  I took some western paperbacks back from Nashville to Georgia already to bring back to Trenton (those books are traveling...)  Below I show three bookshelves in GA and one in Nashville to illustrate what I mean (there are many more.)  The top left bookshelf below has more western paperbacks on the top, and two rows behind it.  The top right bookshelf is the way they are stacked here in Nashville, two rows deep, one on top of the other.

Just before I left Georgia early last week, I found a box in the garage and, surprise ... more western books.  They are part of my late husband's Louis L'Amour collection, at least 90 books there.  That will be for my next trip to Trenton up in the North Georgia Mountains.  I have plenty of work to do with all his books and mine, and for a long time to come.  But I also found one of my favorite books written by Chinese philosopher Lin Yutang (1895-1976) "The Importance of Living."

There are many quotable passages in this book.  The jacket says: "Playfully serious, cynically kind, shot with comedy, and backed by science and the thoughts of the sages, the medicine Lin Yutang prescribes is the Chinese philosophy of life: Revere inaction as much as action, invoke humor to keep life sane, let others struggle for power while you bask in the joy of existence."  Here is one quotation from the book:

"Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone.  The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials."

I know my late husband would be pleased to have his books brought to the North Georgia Mountains where interested readers would have access to them, but I also know that he would approve of my taking a needed rest from all the book sorting.  Here is another quote from Lin Yutang:

"If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live."

I certainly can stop as of an afternoon, relax and have a cup of tea while perusing an old book, of course, before deciding what to do with it, and not feel guilty.  Below is "Quiet Pleasures" painted by Gustave Max Stevens, Belgian 1871-1946.