Serendipity, or Finding lost treasures

In each of our last two homes before we moved to our apartment at 300 Queen Elizabeth Drive, I had over 70 meters of book shelves - 76 meters at 34 Waverly Street, 72 meters at 685 Echo Drive; here I have 24 meters. So several shelves hold rows of books behind other books and many hold books untidily stacked in front of or on top of more or less neat rows of books. The long column of Hakluyt's Voyages, the Everyman Encyclopedia, and several other sets are sturdy enough, and leave enough space above them and the bottom of the shelf above, to hold a pile or a few books for which otherwise there would be no space anywhere. What's more, when we moved in here I didn't take the time and trouble I'd taken previously to organize and arrange my books. So that's why I often hunt long and fruitlessly for a book I know I still have, that I didn't pass on to one of our children or grandchildren, or dispose of to a dealer or in a garage sale. (There is also the John Last Collection of over 700 rare and antiquarian books on medicine, public health and related sciences that is safely stowed in the Roddick Room of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons). Hunting is fun though, even when there's only 24 meters to hunt through. I've remarked before in this blog about the unexpected delight of coming upon a lost treasure when hunting for something else altogether. This afternoon in this way I found Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island. I'm a great admirer of Bill Bryson, and mine is a treasured copy I bought in London many years ago, almost an identical twin of one I saw last week on the shelves in the corridor between the tower and the garage; but not quite a twin because mine is the original UK published version, the one in our condo's library was published in Canada, with the subtle changes in wording and style that publishers make presumably in the belief that readers are insular idiots. I should compare the UK and Canadian versions, but the latter quickly disappeared from the condo's little collection so the opportunity was lost. Why do I admire Bill Bryson? An American from the middle of Middle America, he's married to an Englishwoman and has lived most of his adult life in England. He has written one of the best books extant on the English language (The Mother Tongue) and several of the best, certainly the funniest, travel books of modern times. Notes from a Small Island exposes mercilessly some of the flaws and fault lines of modern Britain and British life and times, but it's written with love and affection unequalled in any other travel book. Most of his other travel books are like this, often with rich patches of laugh-out-loud rollicking wit. I read Notes from a Small Island on a train trip from London to Edinburgh and it's as well that most of the time I had the carriage to myself (it was one of those modern long carriages, not cut up into compartments) so my guffaws of unrestrained mirth didn't disturb fellow-travellers. For her birthday last week, I got Wendy several books, one of which is Bill Bryson's latest, At Home. It looks full of interesting, quirky, odd, offbeat information and ideas. It may be hard to resist the temptation of having first dibs -- or maybe this is one I could read aloud to her...