You Can Now Say, " I Told You So". Go ahead, I can take it.

Balzac's Droll Stories from 1870's by Balzac
(Will have its own post one of these days.)

 For some unknown reason (one of those times when it seemed like a good idea at the time), I got up on my high horse and said I was not going to buy another book until the end of 2014. (here).

The weather was having a fake summer whilst still winter and I was in a very high mood and felt very strong.  Well the past week has been cold, I haven't left the house in a week and my mood was starting to fall fast. I moved from bed to couch to bed, food in hand, a stack of books beside me, cheap magazines and internet fully charged. I woke up this morning and thought, "Right - get up, get out."  I felt like I was in training for living in a nursing home.

Besides I kept thinking my old haunt, Imperial Books, which is a great second hand book shop in Hobart had changed its name to Spineless and Cracked.  I was curious to know if they had new owners. T. was going in to the gym today so I said I'd ride along with him and do some errands in town and I could check out the bookshop to see what the story is.

A lovely old Wodehouse Penguin No 995
first published that shop owner had set
aside for me.

I also had a monthly retirement check from the 14 years I worked in Florida to deposit. It arrives the first week of the month like clockwork. I have to go into town, stand in a line, speak to the bank "specialist" because a regular teller is not able to deposit it. Then I have to pay a $10.00 fee and have a 28 day hold put on it. It is a bloody nuisance but it does get me into town.
There is another bank I could take it too but they have a 35 day wait on it and the one I go to often forgets to log in the 28 day hold and I can access it immediately. Each month they ask me, "Why don't you have this directly deposited?"

I tell them that the Florida Retirement System is so archaic they don't have the facility to do so outside of the immediate 50 states of the USA.  The 'specialist' who has a desk to sit at instead of standing at a counter says, "Why not?"  My answer is the same, "Because the state of Florida is too busy monitoring the little car on Mars and wondering how many more people they can send to the moon."  Technology has not caught up with the Florida Retirement system and I must be the only person to ever have retired from the state of Florida who moved to another country.  We all laugh and my check is then deposited.

Photo doesn't do it justice. A teal colour 

Penguin Classic L 77 (first) 1958

So down the street I walk to the second hand book shop to find out the latest there. On my way I have to walk around a very young policeman who has just collared a girl who was part of a screaming gang of girls who ran out of a cheap cosmetics store, making no amount of noise.  She stood there arguing with him as he slapped the handcuffs on her. No doubt an active little shoplifting ring happening.

As for me, I had bigger fish to fry. I had to find out if the news from my favourite second hand bookshop was good or bad.

Turns out it was all good.  In respect to the man who ran the Imperial who died a year and a half ago they didn't want to immediately rename it. So they gave it a year and have now upgraded it and the name.  Of course now everything has been completely rearranged and the wall of Penguin books that was always in one are has disappeared.  The entire back section has been re-shelved with Classic books, anything before 1900 and all literature after that in the Literature section. The popular novels are in their own shelves called "Airport Fiction".  This includes the Robert Ludlums, Danielle Steels and Dan Browns, etc.

Vintage Penguin Classics (firsts)
L 117 and L 76

As for the Penguins? They are now literature and shelved alphabetically by author amongst all the other Lit books. Great.  But back to buying books?  I was so happy the shop only gets better and better and the display of books so excellent I started browsing the shelves looking JUST for Penguins.
However I found some wonderful non Penguins and I thought "Stuff It".  I can think of two bloggers I follow in particular who will make a joke if they read this so maybe this will be the post they don't see?? Is that right Elaine and Thomas??
So this is what I bought. And boy oh boy did it ever feel good. My mood meter went sky high and let's face it books are cheaper than drugs, right?

I can't go past a book that is 

actually about reading.

This looked great.  Originally

written 1920, this copy is a 1947

British Publishers Guild

Enjoy my find and if you are familiar with any of these titles or authors feel free to comment. Or also feel free to say "Ha ha ha" or " I told you that you couldn't do it."  You'd be right. I couldn't but I did go for almost a month.