I have this copy of John Milton's Complete Poems on my shelf. It's been sitting there, unread, since I was in college (a long time ago!), and I tried just now to read it. But I quickly realized why I haven't wanted to go near it all these years: I can't stand John Milton. So I looked on eBay, thinking some poor student might want to buy it. I did an Advanced Search for recently sold items to see what kind of market exists for books by John Milton. Ha ha! No market exists, apparently! Of the five Milton books on sale recently, there were NO bids for any of them.

So that leaves me with my current dilemma. What do I do with this Milton book? I have many others that are in the same situation as my Milton book: unread and unloved but using up valuable space on my shelves. I have a personal rule for stuff in my house: use it or lose it. I don't use this Milton book, and others as well, but I obviously can't sell it.

So should I do the unthinkable and throw it away? I doubt even the local library would want it.

 :-\

bonfire?

Do you know how ironic that would be for a book of work by Milton?

yeppers

I think he would have gotten a giggle out of it.

Dear Jay

Guess this book was printed before there were these on-demand publishing houses.

Is John Milton's mother still alive....most moms want their kids things
if they do not already have a basement full.

I used to put my very very first paintings on wood in the fireplace 'fire wood pile'
on the back porch and my mother kept pulling them out behind my back
and put them in the closet.

Bonfires need fuel

No bonfire no marshmallows !!!

summer smiles
silent lotus

>>Bonfires need fuel<<

Funny.

Hard to believe, though, that I'd have to trash this. I'm sure at colleges they're paying $150 for a book like this these days.

Has anyone seen the price of college textbooks today?

Egads.

Hey, what if you took it to one of those stores that buys back textbooks? I think there's one in Fairfax...

Maybe. The problem is that in colleges they're always needing a particular edition so that everyone can follow along.

I know a grad student who walked around last year with Paradise Lost on his Ipod.  I could ask him if he'd like a copy.  Collected works, is it?

Rick

Seen them? **Sigh** - I have to go to campus in a week and a half & PAY for about $500.00 worth.....lol

this after having to go out school clothes shopping for both kids - did I *sigh* already....oh yeah....I did....

xo M

$500.00 ? I'd say you're getting off cheap, lol.  My daughter's books never run less than $800.00 with a few hundred here and there between.  I do, however, have the consolation this will be her last year - her Master's is covered thank God!

but enough of that,
what I do with books that gather more dust than page turning, is donate them to Goodwill or another like charity.  You could also check with local highschools and such, they often have bazaars for fund raising and the same goes for some churches.  When we lived in the Seattle area, once a year one of the local malls would donate space for the sale of used books (donated by members of the community) and then the profits would go to local shelters.  I'd look for something like that.

Jay,

Take some scissors and cut Milton's book up into bunches of pieces and toss them like a salad. pick up the pieces in random and glue them onto plain paper and see if something comes up worth saving in your notebooks. That way, when you are done, you can throw away the scraps of a literary project rather than a sacred book. You'll sleep better.

larry

Oh, boy. Great idea.

:)

I'm afraid this is going to be a lifelong project. I have a lot of books that never get read.

Jay, write a poem about the humble situation of this book and see if any change...

Vasile

I'll trade you Plato's Republic for the Milton. Then we can not read each other's books.

:)

This is fun.

I talked to Matt (the Ipod guy) and he'd be glad to have Milton between covers -- kinky boy.

 :)

Rick

I was in the attic yesterday afternoon pushing boxes around and found a plastic tub of paperbacks I read probably 15 to 20 years ago. I had forgotten they were there. At least two of them, I know I bought again at some garage sale or another.  Hermetically sealed in that tub, they were yellowed but free of spiders, beetles, wasps and mouse nests. I feel like I had a private Christmas.

A few of the titles:
A Guide to Non-flowering Plants
Fossils (one I bought again)
Scenes and Monologues from the New American Theater
50 Great Short Stories
The Jungle
The Mender's Manual Repairing and Preserving Garments and Bedding
As I lay Dying
Byron's Hebrew Melodies
Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas (another one I bought again)
I am Third (by Gale Sayers)
A Season on the Brink: A Year with Bobby Knight and the Hoosiers

At garage sales and library sales, I am a sucker for textbooks, biographies, guides, poetry, plays, cookbooks, how to books, art books, craft books, histories.... Once I got a beautiful Audubon book for $2.00

Wait, that's everything isn't it?

If it's fifty cents orless and in English - I guess I'll buy it. 

Lavonne, I'm delighted by the ecclecticity of your mind.

Rick

On the subject of old books. I am a real sucker for them!  I buy the old ones that aren't worth saving (for anyone else.)

Audubon's America - edited by Donald Culross Peattie, published 1940 - paid 2.00

I got all these for 1.00 or less:
Little Men - Louisa Mae Alcott, copyright 1940
Der Fuehrer - Konrad Heiden, published 1944
Practical Home and School Methods Volume X - Bernhart P Holst, published 1926
East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Theodore and Kermit Roosevelt, copyright 1925
Jo's Boys - Louisa Mae Alcott, copyright 1957
Earth Horizon, Autobiogrphy - Mary Austin, published 1932
Short Stories from the New Yorker, published 1940
Knights of the Range - Zane Grey, copyright 1936

and I have so many, many more.

It is interesting to note that the older the book is, the better the condition, usually! Newer paper-making processes use much more acid that the original process. Acid is what makes older paper become crackly and brown.

I had a volume of history which was passed down in my husband's family for generations and was published in the mid 1700's in Edinborough. It refers to the colonies and is printed using those wonderful, old-fashioned f-s's! It has hand-written annotations made by someone who was proof-reading the book. It is freaking marvelous! I gave it to my son when he obtained his graduate degree.  The paper is pristine - almost. Just the barest, tiniest hint of foxing - you wouldn't even notice it really. The ink from the annotations is a beautiful walnut brown compleat with all the swashes of the times.

Tell me about your old books, newspapers, magazines, ephemera.

I have a lot of old plays that ee cummings wrote, my ex gave them to me as anniversary gifts, he also gave me a whole bunch of medieval school books, if you can imagine such a thing. I usually bring them in to show the students that, no, I'm really not that hard on them. ;)

How cool is that!

"May I express thee unblam'd?"  :)