The World's Best Reading

I've been collecting these since I first came across a few volumes of Dickens in a thrift store many, many years ago--for around $1 apiece. They're really lovely books: 1/4 leather bound with a nice variety of colors and patterns, decorative endpapers, nice illustrations (at least up until 1999), and, as you can see from the titles in the photo, they really do represent some of the world's best reading (they start with "Little Women" in the photo, the others before it are from different collections). They're published by Reader's Digest (no, they're not condensed: they are complete and unabridged), and are sold new as a subscription service; one title per month for $30 or $40 I think. But I've obtained all mine for $10 or under from thrift shops, used bookshops, Amazon, and ebay. Booksellers don't know what to do with them because they don't have a upc code, never having been intended for retail. I'll let pass the obvious comments that brings to mind on the state of our society.

Anyway, I am most pleased with my latest acquisition, which is one of a handful released only in the UK or other parts of the former British Empire.

What a lovely book! (so far) The Welsh have an ancient reputation for an innate mastery of words and language, and Llewellyn's writing bears it out. (ok, I admit being a little predisposed to believe it, being Welsh on my mother's side). A few examples:

"But in those days money was easily earned and plenty of it. And not in pieces of paper either. Solid gold sovereigns like my grandfather wore on his watch-chain. Little round pieces, yellow as summer daffodils, and wrinkled round the edges like shillings, with a head cut off in front, and a dragon and a man with a pole on the back. And they rang when he hit them on something solid. It must be a fine feeling to put your hand in your pocket and shake together ten or fifteen of them, not that it will ever happen to anybody again, in my time, anyway. But I wonder did the last man, the very last man who had a pocketful of them, stop to think that he was the last man to be able to jingle sovereigns.

"When we sat down, with me in Mama's lap, my father would ladle out of the cauldron thin leek soup with a big lump of ham in it, that showed its rind as it turned over through the steam when the ladle came out brimming over. There was a smell with that soup. It is in my nostrils now. There was everything in it that was good, and because of that, the smell alone was enough to make you feel so warm and comfortable it was pleasure to be sitting there, for you knew of the pleasure to come.

It comes to me now, round and gracious and vital with herbs fresh from the untroubled ground, a peaceful smell of home and happy people. Indeed, if happiness has a smell, I know it well, for our kitchen has always had it faintly, but in those days it was all over the house."  

"She had on a straw bonnet with flowers down by her cheeks, and broad green ribbons tied under her chin and blowing about her face. A big dark green cloak was curling all round her as she walked, opening to show her dress and white apron that reached below the ankles of her button boots. Even though the Hill was steep and the basket big and heavy she made no nonsense of it. Up she came, looking at the houses on our side, till she saw me peering at her from our doorway, and she smiled.

Indeed her eyes did go so bright as raindrops on the sill when the sun comes out and her little nose did wrinkle up with her, and her mouth was red round her long white teeth, and everything was held tight by the green whipping ribbons."

 "'Bad thoughts and greediness, Huw,' my father said. 'Want all, take all, and give nothing. The world was made on a different notion. You will have everything from the ground if you will ask the right way. But you will have nothing if not. Those poor men down there are all after something they will never get. They will never get it because their way of asking is wrong. All things come from God, my son. All things are given by God, and to God you must look for what you will have. God gave us time to get His work done, and patience to support us while it is being done. There is your rod and staff. No matter what others may say to you, my son, look to God in your troubles.'"

I love when I find that a book is as beautiful inside as out. Or a woman, come to that.