One Word Challenge: Old Books from Second-Hand Stores

One of my favourite memories of childhood was of a friend and I who both loved reading books.

In the summer we lounged outside under the shade of a big tree books in hand. In the winter we retreated to the attic of her father’s antique store where we consumed dozens of dusty tomes that hadn’t yet made it down into the shop below.

I got in the practice of haunting old bookstores and thrift shops searching out old books and now have a pile. So what can I do with all these old books?

Practice taking long exposures with my camera on a tripod.
Scan the covers – I never know when it might come in handy.
The end pages of the old book Vashti contain ads for your sixpenny unabridged novels and the fancier 1s. novels. And the list of novels reads like a college reading list. Love the old style title pages – this one reminds me of a William Morris wallpaper which makes sense as this book was printed in Glasgow in 1926.
Some wonderful old book texture I found on the inside front cover of The De Coverley papers.
These brown spills on the inside front covers made for an interesting texture overlay on some tree shadows.
Some handwritten notes and water damage inside an old Merchant of Venice textbook. This could make an interesting texture too – now if only I had some old images of Venice.
More scanning: the illustration and title page of the 1892 edition of Typee by Melville, he of the Moby Dick fame.
Table of contents 1892-style; also from Typee by Melville. I wonder what his blog might look like? Maybe I could the same for my blog.
And the last thing you can with old books is to read them! I’ve just made my way through Typee and it was quite the adventure novel – no wonder Melville was so famous. I would say this is recommended reading for anyone going to the Marquesas.