> There were still some affordable items I managed to come away with: two more Thornton Burgess books for my collection and a first edition of "My Crowd," a book of Charles Addams cartoons. Now my only problem is finding shelf space.
>

I did consider writing an ultimately negative post about how I don't see the point in collecting books that you can't touch without the value dropping like a lead balloon, but it was dispelled in an instant by the knowledge that I have a selection of Beatles EPs wrapped up in the loft that my mother bought on a trip to France when she was a teenager - on which the Fab Four (in the early days while they were still trying to get established) sing in French. Hardly played, and in what appears to be good condition, we decided to put them away for good keeping.

Her vinyl copies of "Revolver", "Abbey Road", and "The White Album" have been played to smithereens, and so are not worth storing, but I love their sound so much I would never be able to put them away even if I was told they'd be worth something in 20 years time.

I think that it's an important point that the worth of a book's content often outweighs the value of it's antiquity and quality of binding (although I've found, equally, that quite a few books would have been much nicer if they'd just left the tree alone in the first place - a good tip is never to buy a book based on a movie, unless it's "The Abyss"). I have a copy of the Poems and Songs of Robert Burns that my grandmother won as a child at school. She gave it to my Dad to give to my brother and I, as we were the most bookish of her extended family. I've read it cover to cover, and have dipped into it's pages more than any other book that I own, possibly with the exception of "Espedair Street". It's the most valuable heirloom I can think of - not only in terms of the sentimental value that it carries in the memory of first reading it aloud in my gran's front room, and the history of it's life in her hands, but in the thought that maybe I will be able to keep it for the next generation of my family, and to share with them the words of a incredibly talented philandering drunk that I found so enthralling in my youth.

Good luck with the new job, by the way.

Bourne