iTunes Shuffle poem

All we do is mess around
I've been thinking how to step to you
Well I couldn't tell you
And I don't know
It's been a long time
Maybe no one told you
Oh very young
Right now I feel just like a leaf on a breeze
Rarity glistened sharp
I've made a habit

[IDK, this doesn't make much sense. It was kinda fun, though. I may do this to get myself started on writing every once in a while. Can you guess what the songs were?]

September book haul

From an estate sale I went to a couple weeks ago:
-Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë (I read somewhere that fans of Jane Eyre would like this so I bought it)
-Laments For the Living by Dorothy Parker (I have her Enough Rope and adored it. This book is of short stories rather than poems but who cares)
-Sonnets From the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (I had bought a different copy for a friend for her birthday but apart from reading the few sonnets everybody knows I haven't read this myself)
-the aforementioned New York Public Library Desk Reference book, which I bought for and have at work

Oh I just remembered I had bought a book from an earlier estate sale as well. It's this 1800s book of Sir Walter Scott's collected poetical works, in leather. Not bookbinding leather, like straight up cowhide, with flowers painted on it. It's so old! I'm not a Scott fan (haven't read anything by him, although I have Ivanhoe waiting for me on my bookshelf) but it was so fragile and amazing I couldn't leave it behind. It has a picture and signature (probably also a picture, rather than physically signed) of the author inside, facing the title page, but the first like 8 pages are bug-eaten so I don't know which year it's from. Definitely from the 1800s, though.
I also bought from this estate sale the DVD of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I'd been wanting to watch for ages.

From my public library's year-round booksale:
-Thank You, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (read this already. Cracked up throughout, like straight up bursting out laughing p. much every page. One word: BANJOLELE. I must read the others. Only qualms: blackface is a plot point! Not once but twice!! And the N-word is dropped casually, constantly, by every character except for Jeeves [perf human being and the best]. Oh 1930s, you so racist. :/)
-Codex by Lev Grossman (I just like grabbed it off the shelf because it was called codex and the cataloging notes said medievalists–fiction. I'm currently reading this. It's about this guy, an investment banker or something, who gets assigned to catalog and sort a rare books collection/library of some English aristocrats and also gets hooked on a virtual reality, quest videogame which I think is supposed to mirror his IRL search for a mythical codex in that library. It's very slow moving; we just see the guy sort and catalog books and then go home and play the videogame and sleep. I love it. I can sort and catalog books all day; apparently I can also read about people sorting and cataloging books all day too. It's just my speed, interesting and old books and not too high-stakes. Also there's a standoffish medievalist grad student who helps the guy and she is basically 10000% done with everything and only cares about the books and medieval/Renaissance/book history. I love her. I'm sorta hoping they become bros instead of ending up together but that's what will probly happen.)

I just bought The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce, which is just as lovely as I remembered. Such a wonderful book. I had sorta forgotten about it until I saw the picture book at Barnes & Noble. It was, interestingly, a short animated film (which won an Oscar) first, then an app (which I did not know), and now a picture book. You'd think it'd be the other way around, ironically enough. Anyway, I found and read the book (gorgeous; they made it look like the one ML writes in!) but didn't buy it since picture books are hideously expensive. But lo and behold, I got a 20% off B&N coupon in my email and bought the book at a reduced price using the last of my giftcard money! Worth it.

Misc. book stuff

I just added another update to my Surprise Stamp post.

I also bought some books from an estate sale and from my library's booksale recently but they will go in another post. The only one I have with me right now is the New York Public Library's Desk Reference, which I bought for work since it's a useful thing to have. 

Also, Threadless.com has this Select collection (the book heart T-shirt I bought from them is from that collection) and they just came out with new stuff, including this shirt and this cardigan with a 'herringbook' print!!! So much want.

One of my birthday presents was this zippered pouch from Out of Print (another favorite online store. Everything has covers of classic books/literature on it), which I had actually contemplated buying. My mom went to a book/cooking store in NorCal with my brother when they were there for a wedding (my brother already lives in that area) and she bought it for me there. I love it. It looks like a library card!!!!! But at first I was at a loss as to how to use it since I'm no longer in school and don't need pouches to hold pens and such. However, I decided to stop carrying my purse around in my work tote bag (the idea had been for convenience; once I was done with work I could just pull the purse out without having to transfer everything) and use the pouch to hold things so that they don't get lost in the tote! And since my tote bag says "Trust me, I'm a librarian" and the pouch looks like a library card from inside a library book, it's all themed! (My other little zippered pouch that I'm using is a sort of coin purse my little brother bought me in Honduras and it doesn't match the theme but we'll ignore that.)

Oh, I also put my favorite pins on my work tote (UCLA Bruins pin from UCLA Alumni, WonderWoman pin I bought at the LA County Fair, small "Respect" rainbow pin that I think a sibling got from school eons ago). I have an "I Read" pin that I got from the LA Times Festival of Books a few years ago, but underneath it says "LA Times" and since I'm not sure if it says "I Read" or "I Read LA Times" and I don't do the latter, I elected not to use it. I had also bought an official LA Times Festival of Books pin with a dinosaur but I tragically lost it a while back (button pins have a really annoying habit of becoming undone and falling off. I almost lost my UCLA pin that way).

TIFITLWIW: Horses roundup (heh)

I was going through the pictures on my phone and realized a good amount of them involved horses. So I thought I'd put them together in a post.

This is by Carol Cable, from a funny book of her cartoons about academe. I saw this and immediately thought of Tumblr.

I saw this and immediately thought of one of my favorite shows. Parks & Recreation takes place in Pawnee, Indiana. There is a Native American tribe on that show, but they are the Wamapoke (sp?) rather than the Pawnee tribe.

This is a funny little horse doodle I found on the back of a book jacket.

Often hardcover books that come with dust jackets will have a publisher's logo or something indented into the book cover (there's a specific term for this I think, like 'stamped' or something, but I don't know what it is). This one's a horse and the initials of the author, who I think is known for writing books about horses. The book (which I just spent like 15 minutes looking for) is The Man Who Listens to Horses by Monty Roberts. I took a pic of this because my initials are MR as well.

TIFITLWIW: Cutest found bookmark

Found this inside the book pictured underneath. Isn't it adorable? It's a cross-stitch embroidered bookmark that reads, "this is where I fell asleep" and has a teddy bear wearing a nightcap. Perfect for people like my dad who fall asleep in the middle of reading.