I scored big tonight!  While browsing through a used bookstore with my sweetie, I ran into four books of noteworthy.

Of course, you know, I had to grab them.

I try not to go into book stores that often for two good reasons.  Reason number one is that I tend to have impulse buy urges which I cannot control, and reason number two is that the books that I tend to have these urges with are usually old, orphaned, out-of-print, or hard to get books that cost far more than they would if they were brand new reprints.

Today, I managed to walk out with four classics that I had been wanting to add to my collection for quite some time.  These are the books I managed to snag:

The Wisdom of Laotse: Lin Yutang, 1948.  Change: Hellmut Wilhelm, 1960.  The Secret of the Golden Flower: Richard Wilhelm, 1931.  The Way of Lao Tzu: Wing-Tsit Chan, 1963

Don’t let the pretty covers fool you.  I doctored them up in Photoshop a bit so they would look prettier.  They are actually quite old and literally falling to pieces.  The pages inside a couple of the older books are brittle and fall to dust in my hands if I handle them too vigorously, the edges yellowed and musty smelling.

While I was there, I bought two small boxes of sandalwood incense sticks so now my office smells of incense and moldy old books.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing since it keeps my dogs out of my office (they can’t handle the strong smell of incense) so I don’t have to add doggy scent to musty books smell as well.

This is just a description of the look and feel (and smell) of the books.  I can’t say much about the literary aspects of the books yet because I haven’t had a chance to dig through them, but given a bit of time, I’m sure I will find them to be quite useful.

Looks like I got some New Year’s Day gifts after all.  🙂

…

The Way of Lao Tzu.  Chan, Wing-Tsit. 1963.
The Wisdom of Laotse. Yutang, Lin. 1948.
The Secret of the Golden Flower.  Wilhelm, Richard.  1931.
Change.  Wilhelm, Hellmut. 1960.