Several fellow BL'ers have recently been extolling the virtues and talents of Edith Wharton; so much so that I've actually been tempted to pick up one of her books, even though I'm pretty sure the stories themselves wouldn't appeal to me (vapid characters, unhappy endings, etc.).  So when I saw this little gem for .10 at a recent book sale it was a sign - kismit - a way to experience Ms. Wharton's writing without depressing myself in the process.

Souls Belated starts mid-scene, two people on a train avoiding each other and the conversation they must have and the reader has no idea why or what the conversation is about.  The ending isn't sad, but it isn't uplifting either; it's a defeat via success.  I don't want to say much more than that - it's a short story and therefore easy to spoil.

But the writing is brilliant and the author perfectly encapsulates the snake-eating-its-own-tail dilemma these two find themselves in and then magnifies it with the woman's over-inflated sense of her own intellectualism.  She has truly thought her way into a corner.

A fast read, but one that leaves the reader with plenty to mull over or enjoy as karmic justice.  Sometimes the passion of your convictions can truly paint you into a corner and leave you exposed to your own hypocrisy. 

A church down the road from us had their annual book sale today.  It's the first time I'd ever been, and it was somewhat smaller than I expected, but still very fruitful.

The 3 books on the right were MT's finds and the picture doesn't include a small bag of children's books I picked up for a song to donate to one of the primary schools I work for (they're in the middle of a book drive for their classroom libraries).

Lots of good bargains and a few I bought because I felt like I should read them and at their bargain price, if I didn't like them, I wasn't committed to finishing them.  

 But the biggest find, I think, was when I was flipping through the fiction titles and came across an old clothbound copy of Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens:  I've never read any Dickens (I know!) and when I flipped open the cover and saw the price I thought "what the hell?" and added it to the stack.  

When I got home, I started googling the older books (pre-isbn) to add to my home database and here on BookLikes, starting with the Dickens.  It's one volume of a 17 volume set from 1890.  I found one listing for it on eBay and the going price was 69.99 USD - the condition of that book was NOT good; from the pictures it was missing most of its spine - much worse shape than mine.  What did I pay for my pretty-good-for-a-125-year-old copy?  10 cents.  SCORE!!

I also paid 10 cents for Souls Belated by Edith Wharton - with everyone raving about her, while simultaneously talking about how anxious her stories make them, I've been WAY hesitant to dip my toe in - until I found this little 60 page gem.  I'm hoping not even Wharton's characters can scar me too badly in 60 pages.

The rest of the haul are all books I'd heard about here or elsewhere that sounded interesting - A Pelican at Blandings was bought solely on the strength of Wodehouse.  The The Children's Bible is the exact same copy I had as a kid and I had a sentimental moment when I saw it; for 2 bucks, it can sit on my shelf and remind me of a happy childhood, although I'm as unlikely to actually read it now as when I was a kid.

I've been moderately interested in owning a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary for sometime, so I snapped up this two volume set for $4 - even though MT thinks I'm bonkers.  I also have him seriously considering ripping out the wall my library shares with the hallway, and replacing it with a bookcase wall.  :D  Woot!