Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish (click the image to visit them) who pick a different topic each week. This week the topic is Top Ten Books in X Genre .
It was too hard to pick one genre, so I went for the top ten vintage books I own.
Most of my favorite books are old, musty ones. I love everything about old books. Their aged boards and pages, the smell, and how they look on my shelves. I’m always amazed at how cheap you can buy vintage books from car-boot sales or charity shops. It’s one of my favorite things to do.
So, here are 10 of my favourites, in no particular order.
- Shakespeare’s Complete Works, Oxford University Press, 1930: This book is so battered but I love it!
- Enid Blyton’s Run-Abouts Holiday & The Put-Em Rights, Lutterworth Press, 1955: I love the certificate at the fromt of one of these, and both books have a loose color illustration in too.
- Beneath the Magic, Hutchinson’s Universal Book Club, 1951: This book is a bit of a a mystery. I haven’t read it yet and can find nothing about it online, but it says the author, Robert Hichens had written over 20 books by the time this was published. I found the author on Wikipedia but there is still no mention of this title. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hichens_(author))
- Dicken’s Christmas Stories, The Heirloom Library, 1954: I remember this from my childhood. Not reading it particularly but it just always being there.
- Through the Looking Glass, Macmillan Children’s Books, 1980: I just love this version of TTLG. The red boards with gold embossed front. And inside it’s patterned with Tenniel’s Alice. So cute
- Edward Lear’s Book of Nonesense, Faber and Faber, 1989
- Best Loved Books, Reader’s Digest, 1980: It took me a long time to realize that these were condensed versions of the novels…vastly improved I’d say!
- Poe’s Tales of Mystery & Imagination, Galley Press, 1987
- Sigmund Freud’s The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Ernest Ben Limited, 1966: I love the sub-title of this book – Forgetting, Slips of the Tongue, Bungled Actions, Superstitions and Errors.
- Hart’s Rules for Compositors and Readers, Oxford University Press, 1967: With sections entitled ‘Nor and Or’ and ‘O and Oh’ this tiny book shows exactly how much the English language has changed in the last 40 years or so. I think my favorite part is the section covering A, or An, in which it basically says you will know which sounds right!