I Love Second Hand Book Stores

I like to read books either that I read when I was younger or about the lives of children of the time I was a child too and this has lead me to visit used book stores for them.
Equally while some may be in print, the publishes have decided to update the text so it isn't wholly the work of the author to bring them line with modern so-called PC thoughts and sensibilities rather than that of the period they were written which really is a pity and then some.

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ArishMell · 70-79, M

When we cleared out late parents' home my sister found a book sent to me as a Christmas present in 1957, so when I was 6, from a family friend in Tasmania.

She asked me if I wanted to keep it. "No thank you", I replied. We buried it among other books destined for the charity-shop. Somehow we could not imagine them putting in the window, this children's book about Tasmanian aboriginal family life, written from the point of view of the children but most likely by an adult descendant of the island's European settlers. Complete with drawings of the adults in sarongs or similar, but the "picaninnies" - yes, that is the dubious word it used for the children - all discreetly naked.

PC? The concept and phrase had not been invented in 1957!

ArishMell · 70-79, M

Not only a pity artistically but also in giving skewed ideas of how people genuinely did think in those days.

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