28 June 2024

Bob the Scientist's collection of green Penguins

"In tribute to your complete set of Agatha Christie, I'll share my Green Penguin = Crime bookshelves. I'm working on the assumption that there may be less interest in the Orange Penguin = General Fiction shelves and the Blue Pelican = Non-fiction ditto. 

We'd been collecting second-hand paper-backs since we were students in Dublin the the 70s. But things took off I went to Grad School in Boston in the early 80s and we'd often spend Saturdays cruisin' the Western 'burbs in an enormous Ford Galaxy with my boss and his wife. I was then collecting foreign language dictionaries and atlases in case any future children need to prep for their Grand Tour but it was hard to resist rescuing too many books [25c for hard-cover, 10c for p-backs] from the dumpster. When we returned to Europe, 10 USPS sacks of second-hand treasure followed us by book-post. 

The matching paper-back bookshelves are old wooden fish-boxes salvaged from the tide-line of many sandy beaches. Those boxes have all been replaced by plastic, which is better for firewood than books. 
As it happens the younger of those future children is even at this moment reading Peril at End House [Ag.Christie 1932] beside me on the sofa. She has, what with DuoLingo and Larousse Online, no interest in the several French dictionaries I picked up in the last century. Time to declutter. Salut!"
Blogger's note: for the other colors of Penguins, see Karyn Reeves' bookshelves.

1 comment:

  1. Good commentary on this one. It could be the opening paragraphs of a novel.

    ReplyDelete

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