All My Books
Yesterday, Kendrick read an interesting tidbit on the instructions from our moving company. It states that we can only take 50 books to China. And for the books that we do decide to bring, we need to document all the titles and describe the contents. He went on to read about limitations on DVDs and CDs, as well, but all I could hear was.. 50 books?!??
I was suddenly reminded of the story of my grandmother getting searched in the 1950s when crossing from Hong Kong to China. The reason? She had stuffed some pages of Hong Kong newspaper in her shoe to make it more comfortable. Bringing foreign media to China was a big no-no back then. Look how far they've come after 50+ years.
Today, I stepped into a used bookstore in the neighbourhood of Østerbro. I asked the shopowner whether or not he would buy used English books. Initially he said no, because his shop was already overflowing with inventory. But he got curious.. he asked me how many. Then he asked me, what kind of books... do you have good taste? I mentioned two titles. You do have good taste, he said. He then showed me the three bookcases he had for English books. I try, he said, to have at least 30% of these to be good books. The rest, he said, are mysteries, romances, I'm falling asleep already... you know, crap. I scanned his shelves.. it certainly looked like a lot of pulp fiction. Well, I said, I'll let you know by the weekend if I have to get rid of some books.
In the meantime, we are waiting for more information from the moving company. Kendrick and I are also brainstorming for what we can do if we truly can only bring 50 books. "No book left behind" is our current policy.
I was suddenly reminded of the story of my grandmother getting searched in the 1950s when crossing from Hong Kong to China. The reason? She had stuffed some pages of Hong Kong newspaper in her shoe to make it more comfortable. Bringing foreign media to China was a big no-no back then. Look how far they've come after 50+ years.
Today, I stepped into a used bookstore in the neighbourhood of Østerbro. I asked the shopowner whether or not he would buy used English books. Initially he said no, because his shop was already overflowing with inventory. But he got curious.. he asked me how many. Then he asked me, what kind of books... do you have good taste? I mentioned two titles. You do have good taste, he said. He then showed me the three bookcases he had for English books. I try, he said, to have at least 30% of these to be good books. The rest, he said, are mysteries, romances, I'm falling asleep already... you know, crap. I scanned his shelves.. it certainly looked like a lot of pulp fiction. Well, I said, I'll let you know by the weekend if I have to get rid of some books.
In the meantime, we are waiting for more information from the moving company. Kendrick and I are also brainstorming for what we can do if we truly can only bring 50 books. "No book left behind" is our current policy.
posted by Gina at 10:10 PM
4 Comments:
Ship them to Toronto, and then pick them up, or get them brought over a few at a time by friends and family.
Ah the classic question; if you were trapped on a desert island (which Shanghai is not, I suppose) and could only bring 50 books with you, which 50 books would you bring and why?
I'd bring encyclopedias. 'Cause I could probably lash 50 encyclopedias together to make a decent raft. Which, admittedly, doesn't help you with your current conundrum.
Oh, by the way, apparently you're 3 years too late to claim ginainshanghai.blogspot.com. Totally taken.
Yeah, but this Gina in Shanghai probably isn't even still there. She hasn't posted anything since the original post in June of 2006.
And Kern, I don't know what kind of encyclopedias you read... but I don't think they would make a good raft at all!
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