I swung by the local used book store for a copy of 1984 to send to the U.S. government and came home with a couple of surprises. One is an adorable little hardcover of Wuthering Heights from CRW Publishing in London. (They have a nice little Austen boxed set... Hmm...). I just can't resist little books. Cloth-bound, gilt-edged, ribbon marker, unread and perhaps even unopened (the marker is still folded over and tucked in). This will replace my disintegrating 1952 Cardinal Edition with the Harlequin-style cover. It's been in the family for three generations, but an heirloom it is not!
The other surprise was a paperback Don Quixote (also unread) translated by Edith Grossman, Gabriel García Márquez' favourite translator. It will replace my parents' 1950 Modern Library College edition with its annoying capitalized Nouns.
The Orwell is a little past its prime but is interesting in that it's a British edition (we get a lot of that here, actually, since many of our immigrants are of the tweedy variety). I might give it a quick re-read before sending it on to Capitol Hill. "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." Who can resist that?
