Thursday, June 30, 2016

Hello, Possums!

*Tries the key in the door*
Look at that!  It works!
*Chortles*
*Hops in, revs the engine and squeals off *



So.  lady red decided to give me a key to this lovely little place - here's hoping she won't regret it; I'll do my best not to break anything (too badly)!  Don't know how often I'll post, but it is lots of fun to have a place to share things I find interesting, and well, I've missed you all.

Now - on to what I found interesting to day.  I admittedly have a thing for books; one of my daughter's friends came over, and after seeing our shelves, asked how many books we have.  I had no idea, so for the fun of it, we started counting.  We got tired after a while and figured that there were probably over 3,000.  Yes, I have a book problem - but I find it goes so well with my tea problem!

So you'll understand when I say that I have a thing for old libraries (well, that, and the architecture of many old libraries is stunning).  So when the story of the oldest library in Britain came across my Facebook feed, I just had to share with fellow bibliophiles.  Enjoy!

8 comments:

  1. Yay, Lyana's posting!

    for the education of “the sons of honest, industrious and painful parents” That made me smile. What a fascinating place, I can almost smell the books! The photo of the chains in front of old manuscripts made me wonder if that was illustrative of the time it was a prison? Anyway, an unusual picture.

    We are a family of readers too, Lyana. When I was a teen, I remember my younger sister - she must have been around 10 at the time - sitting at the kitchen table, reading the phone book. I asked what she was doing and she said it was the only reading material she had at hand, lol.

    I read slower than I used to and almost exclusively when I turn in so there are times I only get through a dozen pages. Hard to finish books that way! Thank you for a very interesting post.

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    1. Lol - that's a great story, florie! A regular complaint from our kids teachers is that they're reading when they're supposed to be doing other things (it's generally said with a chuckle - we've been fortunate to mostly have good teachers). Around here, I've occasionally found a child reading the dictionary, just for the fun of it.

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  2. Two of my favorite libraries are the one at Highclere Castle (Downton Abbey) and the one at Saltram House (portrayed in my all-time favorite movie "Sense and Sensibility"). I wish I could have seen them in person, step up on that ladder and look for an old leather-bound copy of something or another :-) It's pretty cool that Cheltham's library is open to the public.

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  3. Ooh, Lady Red. I hope you aren't going to regret this.

    Just kidding. It is wonderful to have you at the table again, Lyana. Have a cupa. I have missed the old friends.

    Considering we are only about 20 minutes from each other we REALLY ought to meet in person some time.

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    1. LOL! I'll never regret it. Never, I tells ya!

      20 minutes? Oh my gosh, I'd LOVE to live 20 minutes from all of you!

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    2. lol! Yes, we ought to, Matt. I've moved further west so I think it's more like 40 minutes now, but still... I'm out that way at least once a month. Maybe not until the fall, though. Getting a recent graduate ready to head off for 10 months is one of the more daunting things I've ever tackled. *sniff*

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  4. What a wonderful post Lyana!

    The library holds more than 100,000 volumes of printed books, of which 60,000 were published before 1851. They include collections of 16th- and 17th-century printed works, periodicals, and journals, local history sources, broadsides, and ephemera.

    You could lock me in there and throw away the key. I would be blissfully content to spend the remainder of my days reading, touching, and smelling all the books at Cheltham. Heck, I could spend the remainder of my days in YOUR library! Over 3,000 books! WOW.

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    1. No kidding! If I were ever to do a tour of the British isles, it would be Roman ruins and libraries.

      I started accumulating books when we moved out here - I was so annoyed by how little good stuff there was for kids in the public libraries, so I just started haunting thrift stores for titles I'd loved when I was a kid. Probably about half of the books are children/young adults.

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