It's not pornography -- it's etiquette!

This article is great! And they are digitizing them! Can't wait.

Thanks for the tip, Jurretta!

Newest Old Books

I've got a few new additions to the collection this month, thanks to the Library of Congress used booksale (oh, don't worry, they're not selling off the collections, staff donate books and the sales go to charities), and a visit to the DC Big Flea at Dulles Expo Center (lots of browsing yielded only two pamphlets and a tablecloth -- most things were too expensive for my taste!

The Big Flea yielded two books on play and exercise:
*The Modern Drill and Exercise Book
*Play Safe with the Games We Love

I got some great things at the LC sale, including, dig this -- the far-out Sex, Sex, Sex, which is from 1969, written by Christian husband and wife team Marcena and Trevor Wyatt Moore, who according to the back of the book, had been "practicing matrimony" for 25 years before writing this masterpiece. They "acquired, mysteriously enough, a clutch of nine children..." One rave review of the book from Father Robert F. Capon, author of Bed and Board, states: "Delightful. Whimsical. Hip. But solid. Square with round corners." That pretty much sums it up. Typography and graphics are used to engage the reader into thinking the book is hipper than it is. I was going to scan some pages in, but I've just discovered that my Adobe Photoshop Elements isn't working with the latest Mac OS (at least on my machine), so I need to figure that out before I can get some images posted for you. Sorry!

In the meantime, you can peruse all of the new books here.

1966: Country Life

I'm in Vermont for a few days of R&R and found a few books at a used bookshop in Brattleboro:

Lao Russell's Love; a scientific and living philosophy of love and sex;

A 1980 reprint of the 1768 The delights of wisdom concerning conjugial love: after which follow, the pleasures of insanity concerning scortatory love by Emanuel Swedenborg;

and

Sex after Forty, which could come in handy now that I'm of that age.

To give you a taste, and to follow up on the nature theme, and since I'm in Vermont enjoying it's beauty, here's an excerpt from Russell's book. It's from a little section called "Country Life."

~~
One who loves country life always feels sorry for those who have not discovered the exciting and beautiful world of Nature. No one can ever be lonely as he walks in the woods and discovers the pulsing, singing, courageous, growing trees, and the bright, glowing beauty of wild flowers--an endless array of them. Each month you discover another species. Did you know that there are actually about twenty-five kinds of chickweeds? Their little white flowers contain tiny capsules of small seeds that songbirds love.

Nature is far more exciting than odor-filled cities whose streets are filled with raucous noises, instead of the sound of the songs of birds, the rustle of leaves, falling twigs, and the "chatter" of wildlife both far and near. . . .

No life is as exciting as forest life, and yet man crowds into cities where there is tension created by man who all too often desires to build transitory wealth for his body, instead of permanent wealth for his Soul.
~~

Ah, with that, I'll head back out into the woods. I've been on the computer way too long!

Free Books!

No, not free books for you, sorry. Unless you head over to where I was yesterday afternoon -- The Book Thing in Baltimore, Maryland, where you can take as many free books as you can carry (really!). It's a fabulous place, particularly for an addict like me. I hadn't been in a few years, so went with my new friend D. yesterday and we found 22 titles for the Miss Abigail collection. Favorites include:

~~Complete Book for the Intelligent Woman Traveler (should help me on my trip to Paris next month)

~~one from the author of another favorite -- Live Alone and Like It. The newly found book is titled Keep Going and Like It for the over 60s crowd

~~a 1930 medical book with slightly disturbing (yet humorous) photographs titled Mental Aspects of Stammering

~~and, complete with instructions for paneling your refrigerator, How to Apply Paneling

See the full list of new additions freshly cataloged on Library Thing.