25th Trinity Secondhand Booksale

This has been reblogged from the Trinity site. Having gone to so many the book shall be interesting reading!

Trinity College Book Sale

This wonderful event is on the 4th to 6th of March this year. Imagine living close to the event – more time spent ferrying new purchases home than browsing if it was me. As it stands I will be driving there and spending short trips to the car with rucksacks full of books.
To set the scene first – Trinity is in the middle of Dublin. Its portal opens on to the mad traffic close to the Quays, O’Connell street and the north side, Dame street and pedestrians coming and going to the shops in the Grafton street area. Generally anyone can step inside the college during the daytime. When you arrive at the doors they should be open so in you go. Inside the courtyards it starts to quieten. There may be people who try to get you to join a tour – up to you. The oldest building is facing you as you come into the first open square – a redbrick building I believe is called the “Rubrics”. Bring your flask and sandwiches and walk towards the building. It lies across your path so keep to the right and you pass the “Long Room” which is the old library. You enter on the right corner of another square behind the redbrick building so keep moving along on the right side till the grounds open up – for cricket and rugby mostly – on your right. You will find ornamental cherry trees and benches close by. Have a peaceful picnic in this oasis of calm with a book – a world away from the crowds. Peace is a wonderful thing to my mind.
Anyway – the book sale. It is held every year. Any book donations to the library during the year that are judged better sold than kept will be held for the annual sale. The dates vary but it starts on a Thursday evening with an auction for the most valuable objects – letters, signed copies, rare items, etc. The open sale begins Friday in a hall on the right as you come through the main entrance. People with boxes of books mark the way. Each book has a price on it and the books are laid out on sorted subject tables. A vast number of subjects are represented and books from all ages are there. My oldest purchase was a reprinted history book from 1804 – first printed in 1794. History started in 4004 BC and moved seamlessly forward to cover Biblical, Greek and Roman events before addressing more recent happenings. I believe the reprint was to change the words using the letter F as the letter S, with the actual letter S. Most such changes happened in print around that time, I believe. Saturday is my favourite – half price morning – everything is half price. At 2.10 pm that day they will sell off the remainder by the boxload for what ever price can be achieved. Each time I fill a rucksack I run a reality check to make sure I haven’t bought too many books. Considerations include not breaking the back axle of the car with the weight of books, not financially ruining my family, not buying books I may never read, etc. Pace myself and be brutal with choices – but I still need a rucksack.
My favourite sections are History, Travel, Hobbies (I got “How to Drive a Steamtrain” there), Fiction, Archaeology, Woodworking, Bookshelves and Libraries, Gardening, Buildings and everything else I find of interest (not being flippant but saving your time with my sometimes wild magpie choices list). As you become more involved in books you will see that not everyone judges the category of a book as you do. I got a beautiful book on the archaeology of Carthage with glorious illustrations once at that sale. It was in the Archaeology section, but it turns out the text was in French. I really must remember the pacing and brutality of choice thing. Some years are better than others and you may find too much, loads, or room to include the more fringe choices – its all down to the random donations during the year. Maybe I will see you there. I am looking forward to it.

Trinity Book Sale

Rescue

The photographs included here are from a small prehistoric monument on the coast of Sligo. It is classed as a Cist – pronounced “kissed”. This is generally a stone line box in the ground whose purpose seemed primarily for burial. This cist is something like 15cm wide and over 3m long so it stretches the theory. But then again Archaeology is well full of theories. Perhaps the body was hammered flat and posted in to the “grave”. Nevertheless it appears to be in possibly immanent danger of destruction and if that happens we will never know.
On a broad basis we see damage like this daily but primarily it is manmade – Bahn and Renfrews book on Archaeology in its theories, methods and practises (a very good book deserving of very good shelves) set aside a chapter on Archaeology and the Public. This chapter has a fair component of “stop breaking it and stop stealing it” type of thing. It puts the quote from Indiana Jones “It belongs in a museum” into the context of – only if we already know everything about it. Once the destruction has taken place the artefacts lose the majority of their point and after complete examination they boil down to (i) awesome or nice looking stuff, (ii) interesting and or informative stuff, (iii) shock and horror stuff and (iv) I don’t want to see it stuff.
Currently reading The Scientific Investigation of Copies, Fakes and Forgeries by Paul Craddock (along with How To Drive A Steam Locomotive by Brian Hollingsworth, but that’s another story). Wonderful book by a curator from the British Museum. From the book on fakes and forgeries – it would be far easier and cheaper to have artefacts made than running the risk of buying them at full price in the market – and there are a lot out there. I remember another book by Judith Miller on the antique trade (she of Millers Antiques Handbook and Price Guide fame) where she stated that more 18th century oak furniture left England each year than was ever made in the 18th century.
Rambling, back to disappearing monuments. I sometimes get the feeling that I need to qualify quickly and find my lost city before they are all gone – joking, somewhat. The monument in question is easier to look at fully because people are not involved – it is the environment – specifically the sea. Last year I took a photograph as it appeared close to the edge of the sea. This year after the storms I checked and it is still there though the sea stripped the land away no more then 20 feet up the coast from it. It needs a rescue so I will pass on the information. A Rescue is a dig that will remove the monument in a dig before the sea does – rescuing what is most important – knowledge of what happened in the past.

Cist in early 2013

Cist early 2014

Just a quick comment on photos in a blog

Firstly I know that this post would be more popular if it had pictures in it. I post using my own photographs because it’s easier to use them and put them into a post as they are usually a direct feature. There may be better (ego prevents me from stating that of course there are better) pictures to put across a message available but I have no right to them. As bloggers we have all come across a picture that has grabbed us in a way we would like to express here but I am something of a black and white person in certain respects. Things get a wee bit grey on occasion and one such was where I say two photographs in a 1940 copy of a National Geographic magazine. They are of the Venus and Winged Victory being manhandled into underground storage in case the German army made it as far as shelling Paris (the April issue of that year). Finding them chimed so well with me looking forward to the upcoming film Monument Men so I decided to contact National Geographic and ask if it was ok to post them here – with proper credit of course. The reply to me was quick and to the point. $200 for each picture. So it’s going to be homegrown, ok, but in context photographs on an ongoing basis here. If you do come across an April 1940 copy of National Geographic it is worth a look though.

Christmas

Though I did read for pleasure (Dangerous Women – a group of short stories and a reread of some of Butchers “Dresden” books) and for my exams (starting tomorrow) Christmas was about fitness as well as enjoyment and study. It was wonderfully thoughtful of our Neolithic predecessors to build their megalithic monuments a good walk away from our carparks.
The pictures are from Knocknarea mountain. When I say mountain – the carpark is half way up it. The cloud was low so the views from three quarters up it were replaced by grey ghosts of monuments. It made it interesting that the easiest thing to find at the top was the edge.
The path up to the monuments from the carpark had turned into a small stream as you can see from one of the photos. Another shows Chert which is a dark to black stone that could be broken to give a working edge – its not as smooth as flint (more of a granular texture) but it is the best available to work into tools in the locality.
A more fit body gives a sharper mind, which means more reading before falling asleep.

Passage tomb solstice allignment

Its the winter solstice coming up on the morning of the 21st. Solstice – sun stands still. Good way of putting it as it pauses before swinging back along the horizon towards its other point in summer. People are looking to sit in passage tombs (the properly aligned ones to be fair to them) and have the sun enter at sunrise. Cant do it. Don’t have the yearning for that mystic experience. If I want to be in a bunch of people huddled together waiting for the light to come in I can take a lift. I am interested in the people who built them though. I intend to get a compass point for sunrise on the horizon and use sticks and string to trace its shadow track. Plotting orthostats, galleries, etc. will be easy to visualise after that. Walking through it may give me some insights into the building of these truly interesting megalithic monuments. Did they possibly get construction quotes or permission perhaps? Were they built with a predetermined time in mind? How many people and how long? What did it look like as it progressed? Did they include parking? How would it be built? Fun aside it is interesting and may lead somewhere.

Memory in print

Memory or the lack of it gives us the requirement for books. I have what might be called a relatively poor memory. When it comes to reading fiction books it really gives me value for money. I have a feeling for the tone of a book – I can almost always feel what a book is like by looking at the spine, without remembering any of its particulars. A handy combination and a good reason for keeping books (on timberbookshelves). I need a specific filing/sorting system when it comes to factual books. No good having an idea that the book I am looking at might help me with a question on travel, geography, history, archaeology, astronomy, cooking, carpentry, etc. This would leave me with the situation of needing to read the book again to find out if I need to, well…….read the book to help me with my question. Does that make sense to you? So I am partway towards sorting this out. Not a huge issue till there are deadlines for completed work, but now that I have deadlines and a mounting compilation of books on various helpful core and periphery subjects. Pretty soon I will need something more comprehensive. Anyone have a Dewey Decimal System cabinet I could use? I do love using them and no offence to OCLC but computerised referencing is just not the same.

Should have mentioned it sooner so I might have got one for Christmas.

It occurs to me that given my prize memory I should read back over my old posts to see how I am doing. Does anyone else do that? Or perhaps even read over their posts before publishing? As I have seen elsewhere, spellcheck is my worst enema.

Magnumlady gave me an idea

Magnumladys’ blog pointed out there was a flea market yesterday so I ventured in to see if there was anything (books) I could buy (cheap books). Thank you Magnumlady. It was full of something for almost everyone. None of it has ever steered me away from looking for books apart for that one time I became a child for five minutes and badly wanted a working steam train. It ran on steam. Anyway, there was a light frosting of books among the stalls so looking took a while, but buying a secondhand book is like diamond mining. You may have to dig through a lot before you find a gem.

And there it was. A pile of National Geographic magazines. From 1940. Beautiful – a whole world apart from where we are now. They contain adds quoting doctors for this and that. Car ads. Articles from a time when the USA had not yet joined WWII. Articles on the silk road, South America – all from that time. A real delight. There was also a small section on artefacts being wrapped up in the Louvre to be sent to the basement. The photographs were not of the treasures, but of the rude hands forcing them into storage. I will scan them and post once I get the scanner working. Anyone looking forward to Monument Men coming out?

I haven’t had a chance to go through them properly yet as I had to be up at 4am to travel and am just back. If anyone is interested in any of the articles that might be in them – please let me know and I will have a look and perhaps post a list of what’s in there.

Good night all.

 

Books are a good background.

The pictures are of the Library in the Yeats Memorial Building in Sligo. I recently heard about it and decided to go and ask if I could see it. What’s so special? The building is Arts and Crafts in style – build in or around the last decade of the 1800s for a bank of the time. It used the finest craftsmanship and materials and still looks quite well. The Library is in two rooms upstairs. The lady who runs the Café downstairs had the key and kindly allowed me to see it. She caters for functions there so if you are about and need it, by all means give her a shout. The books were donated by the Yeats family (of the Nobel Prize Winner Poet Yeats) so its something to look along their spines. Hope you like the pictures.

Looking for light in darkness, but couldn’t find the darkness

My wife and I went out to Streedagh to see if we could watch or even catch a glimpse of the predicted Aurora Borealis. It is an ephemeral vision at this low latitude, but if there is a chance who would miss it? We missed it. We went out to Streedagh because it is a north facing beach which would give a clear view if indeed it showed up. There was a light mist but the moon was making a good show through and the hope was it would clear over the sea. It didn’t and the moonlight hitting the low (very thin – we could spot stars) cloud basically set up a light screen.

So far a blog about what hasn’t happened. Onwards.

The beach was being pounded by surf – clear in the moonlight. Further along the strand the mist coming off the surf seemed to dissolve the vista beautifully. The camera could not get enough light to capture the beauty of the scene, but as our eyes adjusted everything was crystal clear. The camera couldn’t capture a shot, but I could see our shadows. Amazing. So we went for a moonlit walk on the beach. Wonderful. The thing is, the human eye takes a while to adjust fully to the darkness, so nothing looked familiar when we were walking back (the car was parked behind the dunes). Found it eventually.

Now the best bit for a random reader passing through – this was a beach where a Spaniard was washed up. From the Armada. Three ships actually beached there, but he wrote letters to his brother at a later point and these were kept safe and translated. I do like to work a book or reading bit in. Its potentially the script for a slew of movies – war, capture, escape, slavery, women chasing him, defending castles, pirates, chases and so on. He was amazingly lucky, a liar, or a bit of both – you decide. His translations can be read here – http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/T108200/index.html . Its an amazing site with a vast number of ancient manuscripts translated. If you do read Captain Cuellar’s translations – no pressure, please let me know what you think of them.