KID IN A CANDY SHOP

A little earlier today I posted an entry over in "West in New England"
about my visit this afternoon to the Abington Public Library. That post
was mostly about the layout of the building, getting my library card,and
exploring the history section there with an eye towards my genealogy
research.

Now I want to talk about something else.

In my younger days I'd visit the three nearby Boston branch libraries
near me with my newspaper delivery bag because there were so many
books I wanted to take out I needed something to carry them home in
(and the bag made it easier to start reading a book as I walked home).

As I got older, there was that high I'd get out of haunting the college
library racks and the bookstores in Harvard Square and finding a book
that made me go "wow!" before I borrowed or bought it. I got the same
rush out of finding a book as the kids after me did out of discovering a
hot video game. I was the proverbial "kid in the candy shop". And of
course, I've been working in a bookstore for most of the last twenty
one years.

You know what they say about working in a candy shop?

Don't get me wrong, I love being a bookseller, and I am dang good
at it, but the "wow" moments are lessened when you see the same
titles on a daily basis. And needless to say, I don't have the time to
browse the shelves when I'm working, which is why I used to like
sorting the incoming stock. I had the chance to get a quick look at
everything that came into the store. 

But today, wandering the stacks of Abington Town Library, I had
several "wow" moments:
Will Durant's eleven volume "The Story of Civilization" .
Winston Churchill's six volume "History of the Second World War"
Francis Parkman's books on the French and  English in North America
William Prescott's "Conquest of Peru"
Samuel Eliot Morison's books on Plymouth and the Bay Colony
Best of all, a whole slew of the Edward Rowe Snow books I read as
a kid fifty years ago!

I think I need a newspaper delivery bag again.