Library Books, I Heart You!

I haven't gotten around writing about it yet, but last week my long anticipated stack of Sylvia Plath books finally arrived. Yay!

Conclusion: it takes ages at least a month (which practically feels like ages) for books to be delivered from the US, should they be sent by ordinary postal service. 

Anyway, I was glad to finally have my hands on them, and take a closer look before reading the volumes. Two of them are ex-library books, with pretty stamps and typewritten info on the spine and in the back.

Ariel Ascending is from Houston Public Library...

. .. while Janet Malcolm's The Silent Woman is from Dubuque Public Library. (No photos, sorry.)

I love second hand books, if I had to choose I'd rather buy a second-hand than a new one. (Like I do most of the time.) I like the fact that old(er) books have a history, they have been owned, held, and read before. I always wonder why they were given away and who could have owned them before me. Well, if it's an ex-library book with stamps and signs in it, then it is fairly easy to find out where my newly acquired volumes had lived before. As always, my good old know-it-all friend Google, helped me out again. 

This is Dubuque Carnegie-Stout Public Library:

photo via flickr

Now that's what I call a decent library! It would be great to see how it looks on the inside...

...and this is how the building of the Morris Frank Branch of Houston Public Library looks like:

photo via

That was the only photo I could find. Probably because it is not as decent and historical as the Dubuque Public Library?

The building may not be, but their stamp is really cool. Isn't it?