My New Wallpaper

I think I finally found some wallpaper that I like. I've always liked the look, feel and read of old hardcover books. Since high school, I've had a small collection of lovely books found inexpensively at rummage sales and thrift shops. Turns out my husband had his own little collection, so we have a few shelves now of old treasures - quite a lot of prayers books, in fact.

This is a photo of a pile of some books that I thought would be eye-pleasing - mostly in the way of having a reasonably consistent size and color range (a little easier to look at than the blossoms, I think - which were originally intended for the Grace Garden Journal anyway).

Here is a list of the books (since some are hard to make out):

across the top:

Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas (Vol. 2) This is beat up enough to have required a little touch up in Paint Shop Pro. It dates from 1903 and is all in Latin.

from left to right:

The Poetical Works of Robert Burns

Tennyson's Poems (1869 edition). This is an incredibly gorgeous book. I think it looks just like one Laura Ingalls Wilder describes in one of her books (I think it's Little Town on the Prairie) that she gets as a gift - I think she snooped and found it in her mother's drawer and was later ashamed. Anyway, I tried to sell it once, when we were pretty tight on cash, but wasn't willing to part with it for the measly $35 offered for it.

McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader (1879) This volume belonged to John's great-great uncle.

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

Life, Letters and Journals by Louisa May Alcott (1889) This one belonged to one of John's grandmothers

The Songs of Ireland (no date, but inscribed with some beautiful old-fashioned ink-pen writing, belonged to John's great-great-uncle)

The Students' Series of Latin Classics: Cicero De Senectute (1918) given to me by my high school Latin teacher, Fr. Joseph Geary, as it was being discarded from his school's library.

The Tragedies of William Shakespeare - this poor book completely lacks a cover.


Now I should probably also admit that I haven't yet read any of these books straight through. I will be remedying the situation with Kidnapped in the near future.

UPDATE: I can't believe how much better the wallpaper looks than the original picture.