The Games We Play

A shiver of anticipation runs up my spine when I catch glimpse of the cover, peeking out over the mail basket. The actions are always the same; slip it under the mail pile until I can safely spirit it away to another room. I go about my afternoon and evening activities, all the while impatient to get to my private reading. Later, much later, I eagerly flip through the pages. A cursory survey, meant only to satisfy my impatience as well as whet my appetite. Reaching the end, I go back to the beginning. Slowly fingering my way through each page, lingering only on the pictures that capture my attention.

The Bas Bleu catalogue has arrived. Or, as I like to think of it, pornography for the bibliophile.

Several times a year, a catalogue appears in the post. Not once have its contents failed to delight, intrigue, and amuse me. And I don’t peruse its pages for just the pictures, of course. I love the witty, insightful book reviews about each carefully selected book. I play the following game each time: if I was forced to choose only twenty-five books from this issue, which ones would I pick? (Books only; no other items permitted, please. Also, it’s the first twenty-five that catch my attention.).

Though the Summer 2011 Catalogue recently arrived, I am still very much enthralled with its predecessor. Without further ado, and in order of appearance, my list of must-haves from Spring 2011:

1. Euphemania: Our Love Affair with Euphemisms
2. The Lost Art of Reading: Why Book Matter In a Distracted Time
3. Sorry, Wrong Answer: Trivia Questions That Even Know-It-Alls Get Wrong
4. The Wives of Henry Oades
5. Smarter By Sunday: Fifty-two Weekends of Essential Knowledge for the Curious Mind
6. Pictures at an Exhibition
7. Endless Night
8. The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes
9. Flying by the Seat of Your Pants: Surprising Origins of Everyday Expressions
10. La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language
11. Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books
12. Nightingale Wood
13. The Happy Hollisters
14. 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement
15. Hiding in the Spotlight: A Musical Prodigy’s Story of Survival, 1941-1946
16. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
17. Dancing with Mr. Darcy
18. My Life in Graphs: A Guided Journal
19. The Truth About Unicorns
20. The Imperfectionists
21. Two Old Women
22. Names on the Land
23. The Thinker’s Thesaurus: Sophisticated Alternatives to Common Words
24. The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter
25. Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children

A reminder that these are merely the twenty-five books that first caught my eye in this one catalogue. Not much effort would be needed to select other titles. Not to mention the website…the wonderful website…