I got to thinking this morning that this guidance from 1928’s What a Young Man Ought to Know might be a helpful reminder right now. We seem to have lost some of this common sense in recent times. Keep cool, everyone!
I’ve decided to come out of semi-retirement, which is otherwise known as “I’ve been too lazy to update my website and social media channels” (at least for the time being) because the state of our dear United States of America has been so distressing to me. If you spend any time on Twitter, which I unfortunately do too much of, or reading the news, everyone seems to have not only lost their minds, but lost their manners. Civility has gone the wayside as people scream at each other to get their point across, no matter how that makes our neighbors and friends and fellow humans, no matter their political persuasions.
The only way I could think about fighting off some of the negativity around me was to turn to my classic advice books for inspiration to get us through these difficult times. While the advice is from a “simpler time,” these words can also still have relevance. And since no one wants to read much anymore (are any of you even still with me?), I’ve abandoned my usual style to quote a long passage here in a blog post to find shorter snippets that are more easily shareable on ye olde social media. Cause ya know, all the kids are doing it.
Here’s the first:
So look for these in the future, and I swear, all of the quotes are ACTUALLY TRUE and come from my vast collection of classic advice books. I may edit them down slightly to make them more succinct, but will use ellipses when I do so so it is clear. If you would like to see the full quote contact me, or dig up the original book for some additional fun!
This entry in the “what’s on my bookshelf” includes more health and fitness books, including some related to caring for your hair and eyes, a few Red Cross guidebooks, and a Christian fitness book. And for some reason the Sears Discovery Charm school binder sits on this shelf. I think it belongs elsewhere, but I went with it and included it here. Enjoy!
A message to all of the Sears Charm School attendees desperate to find a copy of the binder: Anne wrote to say that her school is doing a fundraiser for their library and auctioning off a Sears Charm School binder on eBay. “This was donated by one of our patrons, and the money raised from selling this book will help keep our library open, so you’re benefiting a charity too.” I asked what year it was, and this is what she had to say: “The back of the book says Copyright 1965, but I can’t be sure if that’s the year it came out.”
I know many of you are interested in this. Let’s raise some money for the library!
A skinny third row down on my first bookcase demands that I stack them horizontally. The books this week are mostly health and some sex-related titles, including a book on stammering, one printed in Norwegian (from our last-summer adventures to BookTown), and a possibly self-published book from 1947, printed in Baltimore and signed by the author, on spine health (which is helpful to me as I combat a bulging disc and associated pain). Check out the Flickr gallery below for the images.
I’m only on shelf one, row two, and I realize that I have sex books for kids mixed in with physical education textbooks, and other health books. Woops. I guess I should reorganize as I go, but eh, that’s not within scope of the project. 🙂
I also (re)discovered that I have a book from 1782 in the collection, which might be my earliest: Buchan’s Domestic Medicine
Check out the gallery here:
Over the years I’ve done a so-so job of tracking which books are in my collection, from a long-ago database on my old Mac, to my website bibliography, and an ultimate move to Librarything.com which has been great and so much easier, but I’ve never managed to get all of my titles loaded.
So for 2015, I’m starting a new book inventory project, and hope to get everything documented so others can see the full extent of the collection and enjoy the covers, some of which are pretty fabulous. The goals and what I’m up to:
1) Ensuring all of my books are listed in my online database over at Library Thing
2) Photographing the bookshelves and book covers (unless the cover is completely blank–for instance hardcovers that have no jacket–in which case I’ll skip those, but you can see the spines in the shelf photos)
3) Uploading the covers to my Flickr account (and hopefully I can get them loaded into LibraryThing as well, though I’m having difficulty at the moment doing that)
I don’t have any interns helping, unfortunately, so this may take me awhile, unless Lulu the dog can help do some data entry… but check back here for updates as I add more shelves and sections this year.
To start off, I’ve finished the first row of my first bookshelf, which you can see in this Flickr album. Things are loosly grouped on the shelves into topics (no LCSH or Dewey Decimal organization here, sorry!), and this first group is from the HEALTH section.
Enjoy!
There’s been renewed interest lately from readers of this site in the Sears Discovery Charm School courses that were available in the 1960s and 1970s; I’ve written about this before on the site, which is likely leading searchers to find their way to Miss Abigail.
A fan and attendee of the course recently wrote to say she was a graduate of the Sears Discovery Charm School during the early 70s in Racine, WI: “I was wondering if you could provide the information from the 3 ring binder regarding manners. I really wish I could locate my binder, but so very appreciative that the information is still available!”
So I dug up my binder (from 1972), and scanned in the chapter for it and sent along. Given the number of emails I get on the topic, I thought others would like to see it to – so here you go! Pop on over to my Flickr account to see the whole chapter, or flip thru the images below. Enjoy!