Madrid Book Haul

I'm home from Spain! Honestly, the whole experience was wonderful and felt like some kind of dream, and I'll definitely be talking more about my adventures when I post my pictures from the trip. But first things first, books.

I was wandering around in Madrid with a couple of friends, and fate happened. We were walking down a street off the Plaza Del Sol and I was complaining that all I had seen were souvenir shops and generic clothing stores when I looked to the left and BAM. A scene straight from Tumblr. Right off this big street there was a little stone alley, and set up on it was a used book stall. It had all of these old Spanish books, shelves and tables of them, along with watercolors and vintage photographs. Literally when I saw it I stopped dead in the street and gasped. I was really sad at first since all the books appeared to be in Spanish and I am a french-speaker, but then I saw a little box labeled "Frances", filled with all of these old French books. Needless to say, at this point I pretty much flung all the money I had at the lady who owned the store.

I ended up with four books: Coeur au Zenith by Louis Bauguion, L'Iris De Suse by Jean Giono, A La Recherche de L'Unite by E. Techoueyres, and La Petite Fille Au Bout De Chemin by Laird Koenig. I'm in love with the packaging of old French books: they're very understated, and the pages are suchhhhh nice quality.

Coeur Au Zenith is quickly becoming one of my favorite books physically that I own. I love the parchment paper wrapping and the simple text on the front and spine. It was published in 1934, and it's sort of crazy to me that I have a book in my hands that was made in France almost a century ago. There's something about the phrase at the beginning, "Vivre seul au monde" (to live alone in the world) that speaks to me. It captures that feeling you sometimes get when you realize however close you get to people, there will always be a separation between you and them, that at the end of the day it is only you. It's hard to put into words but I think the phrase, especially in French, comes as close as possible.

This book was published in 1970. I actually have no idea what it's about; the cover flap seemed to be talking about a flower and then lapis lazuli and then architecture and then the invention of zero, so I guess I'll just find out when I read it.

This book seems to be a philosophy book, which I'll never say no to. It was published in 1937, and the pages are all browned around the edges. I just love feeling the paper, it's such nice quality.

This book was actually written in English first and translated to French. The French edition was published in 1974. It's a thriller about a thirteen year old girl who lives alone on Long Island with her dad, and doesn't go to school. It should be pretty fun to read and maybe after I finish it I'll get the English edition to compare. I love reading in French because there are some ways that ideas are said that just can't be translated to English, or that present things in a little bit of a different way. One of my favorite examples is that you would say quelqu'un me manque, instead of I miss something. Something is doing the missing to you. It's a little bit of a different idea, and it's really fun to find things like that in another language.

My pictures from Spain will be up soon, so stay tuned for those!