Some of the books are fairly old, and it's these I like most. I was hoping to find some from the Victoria era, partly for research for my Lizzie Lott books (I'm on chapter 4 of book 2 at the moment) and partly because I want a slew of non-copyright pictures for a project I'm working on. However, they didn't have the usual section for century-old books this time. Perhaps some antique bookseller came in and bought the lot?
Some of the books are sufficiently old not to be the kind of thing you'd see on sale these days. Here's an example:
Actually, they probably do have those in America, only saying "Christian" instead of "Protestant".
Here's a book from the 1950s:
Now there's a word that was appropriated for a different use that annoyed those who used it before, which was then reappropriated for another different use that annoyed both those who used it before and the people who appropriated it from them. Either way, it's hard to read that title nowadays and sense what it meant 62 years ago.
I had to zoom in for this one so the words were readable:
With a name like that, ballet was her only option.
Some of the books have hand-written notes in them. Here's an example:
It would be interesting to know if Douglas's father survived the war, but the surname is hard to make out so I don't know what to look up.
A lot of books are rather dated now. I didn't take a photo of The Right Way to Tape Record because a woman who smelled of horse manure was standing next to me, but I would have done if she hadn't been there.
Some books were in the wrong section. Pasture Management for Horses and Ponies, in among the mathematics books, was my favourite. There was also this in the myths and legends section:
That's a first edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide plus shield. It was going for £1, which, given that there's one on eBay right now for 99p, seems reasonable enough (especially since the eBay one comes with a £4 postage charge).
I didn't buy any books. I would have got the 1962 Guinness Book of Records they had except my wife disapproved. In the end, we got a couple of literary novels for our younger daughter, who likes that kind of thing.
Oh well, there's always next year.