Books, wonderful books

For the past few months boxes of free books have been appearing near the Redpath Library at McGill. For months I have been checking these book boxes out and taking books that piqued my interest.

It seems that each year at McGill a fundraising group holds a major book sale that takes months of preparation. These free books in boxes are the books that are believed to be unsaleable by the sales organizers.

Each day on my walk to school I look out for the boxes. On days when they are out I try to check back several times throughout the day as new items are constantly being added. To too great a degree these free books are setting the patterns of my life. Moreover, most of the contents of these boxes really is unsaleable. My standards have been lowered in accordance with the price.

Since I picked up my first free book up in June (when I was hear apartment hunting) I have amassed more than 40 titles. Some of these are worth mentioning, others are not.

Below you will find a partly annotated list of most of the books that I have picked up from this source.

1. Miami and the Siege of Chicago : an informal history of the Republican and Democratic conventions of 1968 by Norman Mailer

2. The Naïve and Sentimental Lover by John LeCarre (I have read the first few pages and am not that impressed as of yet, I don’t think that I will keep going)

3. Danny Dunn and the Heat Ray by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin
( I picked this one up because it reminded me of a few books in this series that my Mother had when she was a girl. The plan is to send it to her when I get a chance.)

4. Our Game by John LeCarre
(I read this one. Very much a spy novel.)

5. Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
(I was pleasantly surprised with this book. For years I have avoided this author for some reason. I preferred this than Edible Woman)

6. Harry Vernon at Prep by Franc Smith
(Tried to start reading this but it was harsh on the eyes, maybe in a few years I will give it another shot.)

7. Nest in the Wind : adventures in anthropology on a tropical island by Martha C. Ward

8. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
(Read about the first hundred pages of this one so far. Not as sinister as the title would suggest.)

9. Maurice by E. M. Forster

10. Silas Marner by George Eliot
(George is really a woman!)

11. One Clear Call by Upton Sinclair
(This book is part of an eleven part series that follows “Lanny Budd” from 1913-1949.)

12. Catalina by W. Somerset Maugham

13. Ambassador’s Journal by John Kenneth Galbraith
(I was wondering if a former Professor of mine, Stephen Keller, would be in the index as he know the author during the period, alas, he is not.)

14. For the New Intellectual by Ayn Rand
(It was free so why not?)

15. The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis
(I think that I actually paid for a copy of this a few years ago.)

16. The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam
(This one I picked up because the author is a Pulitzer Prize winner, though it does not seem to have been because of this book.)

17. Outlines of the History of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

18. Footballers Don’t Cry by Brian Glanville
(It was free, I was cold and wet and wanted to come back with a free book.)

19. The Children by Edith Wharton

20. This England : selection of pieces from the New Statesman edited by Michael Bateman

21. The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

22. Langenscheidt’s German-English English-German Dictionary

23. Pluckoon by Spike Milligan
(I have wondered what Spike Milligan “was about” for a few years so I thought that this would be a good starting place.)

24. Perry Mason Solves the Case of the Screaming Woman by Erle Stanley Gardner
(This author was mentioned in my cataloging class so I thought that I might check him out, on top of that this names appears in crossword puzzles all the time and it would be nice to be able to place the name.)

25. Perry Mason Solves the Case of the Fenced-in Woman by Erle Stanley Gardner
(See above. There were two there at the same time.)

26. Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
(She seems like a famous author.)

27. The Adventurers by Harold Robbins
( I have no idea what this book is about, but I picked it up for some reason or another.)

28. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
(Pretty famous book that won’t hurt one’s collection.)

29. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
(See above.)

30. Famous Last Words by Timothy Findley
(I am still trying to figure out if this is the same author as of the book “Last of the Crazy People.” If it is I have heard good things about him, if not I could probably ditch this book.)

31. The Club of Queer Trades by G.K. Chesterton
(My grandmother used to have a quote from this guy on her bathroom wall, might as well see what his books are about.)

32. Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Allan Gurganus

33. Galahad at Blandings by P. G. Wodehouse

34. The Bad News Bears by Richard Woodley
(It wasn’t until after I returned home that I realized that the book had been based on the screenplay, the screen play from the 1970s that is.)

35. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin

36. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

37. A Perfect Spy by John LeCarre

38. The Looking Glass War by John LeCarre
(The last of the four LeCarre books that I have picked up. I think that I might be going for the entire collection, though I can’t say that he is my favourite author. Maybe I will try to read Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and then base my evaluation of his oeuvre on that.)

Two books were picked up and given away so their titles aren’t available.

Hopefully over the next few days before the sale, and maybe for a few days afterwards, I will be able to extend my collection of free books even further.