Madison woke up pretty soon after I hit “post” on the entry below. Brett is saying that we should rearrange our schedules in January so I can write in the evenings and I was thinking that in February — when we go to Florida for a couple of weeks — I can pull together a proposal from whatever I get done in January. I just need to hang loose ’til the holiday season is fully over (next Monday). I’m having a family Chanukkah party on Friday so I’ll need to get things ready for that and then there’s New Year’s.

My mom paypal’d me money for a haircut so I paid cash to the beautician and used the paypal to buy a bunch more green books off of ebay. I am greedy for green books. Here’s my collection so far: View image

As you can see, my green book collection has morphed to include books that by all rights should be green books or that are green books but I have them in non-green book editions or were earlier green books when the series was black or are later green books when the series sported nasty pink spines. If you are a woman and you visit my house and ask to borrow a book, this is where I head first but I won’t let you take one home if you’re untrustworthy; green books are too hard to find to just be loaned out like regular books.

I do believe the Virago books now include some male authors but you won’t find any in my collection unless someone grabs one for me by mistake. No, the green books for me are all about women writers. They’re my inspiration. Back when I did those featured authors every month (old timey blog readers will remember this), I usually pulled them from green book authors. My very most favorites? Barbara Comyns, Antonia White, Mary Webb, Mrs. Oliphant and E. H. Young. Oh and Elizabeth Taylor (she NOT of the violet eyes). I think Elizabeth Taylor’s The Soul of Kindness was my very first green book and that White’s Lost Traveler or Frost in May were early acquisitions, too. I was so excited when I found either the one or the other because it matched the first ones.

I used to buy my green books at a bookstore here in town that specializes in close-out books. I would go in there with ten bucks and come out with a stack of $1.49 Penguin paperbacks (orange spines). This is how I found Milan Kundera, Tadeusz Borowski and Face by Cecelie Pineda. Somewhere along the way a black Virago Modern Classic found it’s way into my shopping bag and the rest is history.

I found a bunch more in thrift stores in Portland. Portland has the best thrift stores for finding books probably because everyone there reads so much. (Portland has more book stores per capita than any other city.) That’s how I built up my pulp Alfred HItchcock presents collection and that’s how I amassed the bulk of my green books.

I still scan the clearance shelves of Half-Price Books for them but they’re harder to come by now. They continue to release some here in the states with the awful pink spines or with a green more pallid than the lovely pine color they used to have. But my best bet is doing a search on ebay and finding a used book seller with a nice big stack of ‘em and then combing through to find ones I don’t have. I really want the third book in Antonia White’s quartet (Beyond the Glass, which I got out from the library to read but MUST OWN) but the first two just seem much more easy to find.

This was a self-indulgent post. It made me happy to write it.

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