Unpacking My Library

I am unpacking my library. Yes, I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order…

Milton’s Works

National Reader

While a bible’s endpapers were often fertile ground for a family tree, school books of the eighteenth and early nineteenth…

Autographs

Since the rise of silent reading in the tenth century, books have promised private experiences. We may later convene with other readers who…

Cicero’s Orations

This volume of Cicero’s Orations, including annotations in English and the original speeches in Latin, has me thinking about…

Plain and Fancy Dancing

Preserved inside Albert Eames’ copy of the Standard Fifth Reader is a folded handbill. It advertises “plain and fancy…

Tower’s English Grammar

The most prolific collector of American textbooks, John A. Nietz, asserted in 1961 that: “every one who can read has…

Cooper’s Virgil

Why do we need to name? What do we gain by calling a bird a vireo? Or an early printed book an incunabulum? Why does anyone need…

Parsing Book

It’s becoming clear to me now that what I’m doing here is parsing. I’m parsing books — and also time. Like Zeno’s paradox: the more you…

Clark’s Grammar

Books talk to us. The voices we hear will vary. Hearing your own inner voice is like catching your shadow by the hand. Sometimes…