Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Book browsing in the mountains

After my annual trek to the mountains, I usually detour to Little Switzerland to browse around The Book Exchange. This year, instead of climbing up the mountain to the little switchback town, I ventured into the town of Black Mountain to see what treasures I could find.

The book store was closed until after lunch, so I stumbled into an antique shop, just to see if they had any books at all. I found some in this corner, some on that shelf - they were scattered all around the two-story shop. The ones that finally tempted me were a first-year (not first edition) printing of The Grapes of Wrath, and The Robe - I hadn't really thought about it being a book before the movie. I also fell in love with a 1916 children's book with photographs, some in color, from around the world.

I ate at one of the cafe restaurants and had some kind of herbed tomato mushroom soup - mmm, divine!

Up the hill, the proprietress at Black Mountain Books really knew her business. She helped me identify my newly purchased Grapes of Wrath. Of course, the really good, antique books were priced beyond my range, but I found a couple of interesting titles to take home: another travel memoir of the Australian Outback, an Atlas of Irish History for research for my book, and a Companion Library edition of Robinson Crusoe.

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