This is our 238th consecutive daily post. It's sobering to think that, if we keep at this for...let's say, five years, we will have published 1,825 consecutive pieces of original content. What the heck were we thinking when we started this?!
Actually, we have always been pretty clear about our "mission," such as it is, as we have made obvious in several previous posts (see, for example, our post of 20 June 2009): the book is not dead (see our post of 7 October 2009), despite the very real challenges that currently are transforming publishing and bookselling (see our post of 15 October 2009); and it still is possible to build a private library of significance to yourself, the marketplace and future scholars for very little money using strategies like contrarian collecting and venues like yard sales, garage sales, friends-of-the-library book sales, publishers' clearance sales and the like (see all 237 previous posts!).
As we have seen with genres like romance fiction (see our posts of 26-28 April 2009), science fiction (4-7 July 2009), hardboiled detective fiction (30 June-3 July 2009) and westerns (25-29 June 2009), inexpensive bookish treasures abound if you know where to look for them. And the best place to start (as should be obvious from our frequent references to yard sales, garage sales and friends-of-the-library book sales) is often locally.
What sparks this little bit of "soapbox" about local treasures is the approach of two major holidays here in the USA, both of which center, among other things, on feasting. Both holidays have their origins in pre-Christian harvest festivals, and thus both holidays often give folks an excuse to buy a good cookbook or two.
Funny thing about cookbooks...you can pick many of 'em up for next-to-nothing at local yard sales, garage sales and friends-of-the-library book sales. Not only that, but many of these cookbooks have a regional or local focus, which makes them of interest not only to folks who collect cookbooks, but also to folks who collect local histories, folks who collect books about the built environment, folks who collect biographies, and suchlike...
Many of these cookbooks were published to raise funds for various worthy local projects...
But the best of these often give fascinating insights into the communities for which they were published...
Yet another reason to buy local....
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