Library Sale
Yesterday my wife took me to the public library, where they were having a sale of old books in order to clear some shelf space. Neat: for € 0,5 per book you could have a go at a few tables full of books of various quality, topic and interestingness.
I managed to score some quite nice finds, for that price anyhow. A copy of 'The Name of the Rose' by Umberto Eco, and a nearly-new copy of 'A Clockwork Orange' by Anthony Burgess, to name a few.
But also a tome on the knights templar and the freemasons, a book about the 'Biosphere 2' experiment from a few years back, something by Marlies Philippa about the etymology of Dutch words, a children's book for my daughter and 'The Human Zoo' by anthropologist Desmond Morris.
Oh, and some political works as well: 'On War' by von Clausewitz, 'The Libertine Manifesto' by failed Belgian ex-stockmarket guru Jean-Pierre Van Rossem and 'Without Civil Servants' by the murdered Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn.
Not bad for a total price of € 5,-
I'm currently reading the book by Van Rossem, and I must say it is quite hilarious. He published it in the run-up to the Belgian elections of 1991 in which he participated with his own party. In the first few chapters he looks ahead to the political future of the country.
Some of his predictions have turned out spectacularily wrong: for example, he thought the Greens would become the largest political formation, since they were mostly a-political idealists. And the far-right Vlaams Blok (now Vlaams Belang) which first gained big electoral succes in 1991, was not even mentioned in the book so far.
