Books, Books, Books...

The Boss gave us book tokens for Christmas.  Now, I don't need much of an excuse to spend money on books at the best of times, so I was delighted to take a trip to Waterstones on a book-buying foray.  I'm pleased to report that I now have my own copies of Herodotus The Histories and Homer's Odyssey (D'oh!).  And I was able to buy another book on the Peloponnesian Wars for good measure.

Here's my inevitable gripe.  Why, of why, can't the publishers still have the old classic editions that have lovely scenes of Attic vases on the cover?  Instead they give us stoopid Renaissance or Victorian paintings!  Bleaugh!

That's enough whingeing!  Not content with that, I came home and placed an order with a second hand bookshop that specialises in archaeological publications.  This is always an adventure: you have to prepare yourself with a list of ten possibilities which you then run through in order of preference, as you can bet your bottom dollar that someone else will already have purchased at least some of the books you're looking for.  Believe me, it's not hard to choose ten books from a list of thousands... 

My hope was to replace a copy I once had of Ashbee's The Earthen Long Barrow in Britain, published back in the 1970s.  This particular book touches a nerve with me - I bought a secondhand copy back in the 1990s, and it got nicked from the Postgrad Room in Glasgow Uni, where it was sitting on my shelf.  I don't know who committed this dastardly crime - but it's a personal insult that I haven't forgiven or forgotten, twenty years down the line.  Unfortunately, the yawning gap on my bookshelf remains - today, the book in question was already sold.  

I actually harbour a secret fear that some day I'll stumble across my own copy in a second hand bookshop, because yes, you've guessed it, I wrote my name on the flyleaf, all those years ago...  I always write my name in my books - I firmly believe that books, like all artefacts, have a biography.  It's interesting to see their previous owners - I've got one or two books on my shelves which were once owned by the celebrated prehistorian Christopher Hawkes, though sadly they're not annotated in his hand...  Nor did he write his name in them - all I got was an accompanying bookplate to prove it.

Anyway, today's wish-list included books on Neolithic long barrows, both of which had gone, various Medieval subjects, again, all gone.  Seems the catalogue went out weeks ago, but I wasn't in the office to pick it up.  But I wasn't entirely lacking in good fortune. My wild card request - an excavation report re-interpreting Evans' work on Knossos was still in stock.  Seems Knossos isn't in vogue just now, so I opted at this point to add another book on Minoan pottery types to my list.

Minoan pottery?  Knossos??  This is really going to help my day-job, isn't it??  We don't exactly stumble across shed-loads of Kamares Ware and Pithoi in the West of Scotland.   Ah well. Everyone's got to have a hobby, I suppose.  Those of you who have been following this blog since the spring will probably remember just how taken I was with the noble pithos...

At least all this superfluous knowledge will serve me well if we ever get back to Crete.  Next time around, I'll have some idea what I'm looking at, instead of just blinking and going 'Oooh! That's nice...." all the time...

Books, Books, Books...

The Boss gave us book tokens for Christmas.  Now, I don't need much of an excuse to spend money on books at the best of times, so I was delighted to take a trip to Waterstones on a book-buying foray.  I'm pleased to report that I now have my own copies of Herodotus The Histories and Homer's Odyssey (D'oh!).  And I was able to buy another book on the Peloponnesian Wars for good measure.

Here's my inevitable gripe.  Why, of why, can't the publishers still have the old classic editions that have lovely scenes of Attic vases on the cover?  Instead they give us stoopid Renaissance or Victorian paintings!  Bleaugh!

That's enough whingeing!  Not content with that, I came home and placed an order with a second hand bookshop that specialises in archaeological publications.  This is always an adventure: you have to prepare yourself with a list of ten possibilities which you then run through in order of preference, as you can bet your bottom dollar that someone else will already have purchased at least some of the books you're looking for.  Believe me, it's not hard to choose ten books from a list of thousands... 

My hope was to replace a copy I once had of Ashbee's The Earthen Long Barrow in Britain, published back in the 1970s.  This particular book touches a nerve with me - I bought a secondhand copy back in the 1990s, and it got nicked from the Postgrad Room in Glasgow Uni, where it was sitting on my shelf.  I don't know who committed this dastardly crime - but it's a personal insult that I haven't forgiven or forgotten, twenty years down the line.  Unfortunately, the yawning gap on my bookshelf remains - today, the book in question was already sold.  

I actually harbour a secret fear that some day I'll stumble across my own copy in a second hand bookshop, because yes, you've guessed it, I wrote my name on the flyleaf, all those years ago...  I always write my name in my books - I firmly believe that books, like all artefacts, have a biography.  It's interesting to see their previous owners - I've got one or two books on my shelves which were once owned by the celebrated prehistorian Christopher Hawkes, though sadly they're not annotated in his hand...  Nor did he write his name in them - all I got was an accompanying bookplate to prove it.

Anyway, today's wish-list included books on Neolithic long barrows, both of which had gone, various Medieval subjects, again, all gone.  Seems the catalogue went out weeks ago, but I wasn't in the office to pick it up.  But I wasn't entirely lacking in good fortune. My wild card request - an excavation report re-interpreting Evans' work on Knossos was still in stock.  Seems Knossos isn't in vogue just now, so I opted at this point to add another book on Minoan pottery types to my list.

Minoan pottery?  Knossos??  This is really going to help my day-job, isn't it??  We don't exactly stumble across shed-loads of Kamares Ware and Pithoi in the West of Scotland.   Ah well. Everyone's got to have a hobby, I suppose.  Those of you who have been following this blog since the spring will probably remember just how taken I was with the noble pithos...

At least all this superfluous knowledge will serve me well if we ever get back to Crete.  Next time around, I'll have some idea what I'm looking at, instead of just blinking and going 'Oooh! That's nice...." all the time...