Anyone who knows me, knows I've never been materialistic. I've been a teacher most of my life, and goodness knows, I've never met a wealthy educator. Aside from my family, which are my real treasures, the only material things in life that have any value to me are my photos and my books. I have lost dolls and games and toys from childhood, but I still have my copy of The Ugly Duckling,a collection of fairy tales, and many paperbacks that I ordered from Arrow Book Club and Tab Book Club in school (remember those?) Unfortunately, though, when Katrina hit, I only had time to pack some clothes and load up the trunk with as many photo albums and scrapbooks as would fit. When we locked the front door and drove away, I knew with absolute certainty that I had everything in the world that mattered right there with me. When we returned weeks later, we found out that we were one of the few very lucky ones. We had a home, much worse for the wear, to return to. The waters had only flooded a portion of the house where we had containers stored. And in those containers were.....my books. (The ones inside the house on high shelves were spared.) Now, I can never go back and replace all those lost books, and I really don't want to; I can't even remember all the titles that I had from my teen years up to 2005. Many books are now out of print and hard to find. But there were a few that I despaired about losing and not being able to order again because they are out of print. I have found ebay to be a safe bet, but even there some titles weren't available and you can lose out with not being high bidder. I found biblio.com and located two very hard-to-find titles on their site. I took a chance and ordered just two books (each one cost $l.00) to see if the shopping experience was a safe and efficient one, and I'm happy to report the books came as promised and in very good condition for paperbacks printed in the 1980's. (I'll tell you what those two books are in a future post.) But for now, check out the website if you have a title that you can't seem to locate...of course, prices vary, but the price was right for me!
"Books are the treasured wealth of the world...." Henry David Thoreau
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