The Ladi Doth Protest Too Much

zadi:

why i love old books:

I found this written in an old book I have: The portable Blake (who I was obsessed w/ in my teen years and am revisiting).

There’s something about knowing that a book has been handled and absorbed by someone else. That someone has flipped and dog-eared its pages and drifted off into a daydream spurred by a word.

And when you find someone has written a note or quote in one of its margins, or highlighted a sentence — man, that’s like hitting the jackpot. :)

I love books that look like they’ve lived.

Agreed. 100%. I love old books, they way the feel, the way they smell, their sense of history. I’m in the process of collecting pre-1950 vintage copies of L. Frank Baum’s Oz series (my favorite as a little girl). Almost every single one I have has an inscription, a note to the person the book was intended for, a date, a name. There’s a sense of connection there that can’t be duplicated by anything else.