I found some pretty awesome Lord of the Rings fan art that I did in kindergarten. (My dad read it to us multiple times as kids - yes, we are a whole family of nerds.)

Very creative spellings here. The Lodhi of the Regs? Belbagns?

I like that I refer to Aragorn by his full, proper honorific: Arawgorn Son of Araton.

Book haul from Goodwill yesterday. All good finds. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency has long struck me as charming and adorable -- now to put it to the test!

The real highlight of this trip, though, was finding a first printing of Bored of the Rings, one of the unfunniest piece of classic humor ever recorded. It's so dumb but it's an awesome bit of weird nostalgia.

I love book shopping at Goodwill (this one is in Milford, CT) because I always find such an odd assortment of stuff -- and there's no organization or sorting, which makes it quite fun to browse!

I was also glad to find Portrait of a Lady, not because I love Henry James or anything, but because every time I look at it I think of this moment from Harriet the Spy, which always makes me chuckle:

"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.'" 

Ole Golly said this steadily and sedately, then leaned back in her chair with a satisfied look at Sport. 

Sport looked completely blank. 
"Henry James," said Ole Golly, "1843-1916. From Portrait of a Lady." 

"What's that?" Sport asked Harriet. 
"A novel, silly," said Harriet. 
"Oh, like my father writes," said Sport, and dismissed the whole thing.

(source: archive.org)

For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth, but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. . . [This] homicide ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself--slays an immortality rather than a life.

-John Milton, Areopagitica