2007-05-15

When History Meets Paper

Well, I warned you, and, finally, I did it!

Today, bank holiday in Madrid (also a catholic festivity to St. Isidro, the town's saint), I went to the Old and Sale Book Fair in Madrid, last day!

There were 46 shops in a beautiful, sunny avenue, a classical Paseo de Recoletos, with trees and, right when it starts, the spectacular statue to the Cybeles Goddess, one of my favourites!

Some locals were dressed in the typical chulapo fashion (couldn't find any quality pictures, you better search them yourself) and quite a bit of people were pekking for books here and there; not as many as I would have feared, many peple probably left for the long weekend (they did ' bridge', as we say here).

The less the better, anyway... :-)

Well, it was nice. I usually get a bit nervous, because I cannot even scan over 1/10 of the books, and I usually have to leave behind a good number of interesting titles... This year, however, I was lightheaded, nothing in my sight, no goals, no expectations...

Therefore, uini, uidi, uici... :-)

I got a 1966 edition of an anthology of writings by Alphonse X of Castilia, a.k.a. "the Wise", including his songs to the virgin Mary (Cantigas a Santa Maria) and some others which were written in my native language (one of them, anyway, galician; or the medieval galician-portuguese variation if you want to be a bit anal retentive :-P ) and then some texts including part of his General History... Pretty interesting, in ancient Galician and Spanish, very cool, indeed... :-)

The other one I got is a Historical Foction novel written by Juan José Valle, Al-Mayurqy (the Mallorcan, which is the isle of Mallorca, in the Mediterranean), which is a book about Yahya ben Ganya al-Mayurqy, who was (as described in the book cover, not that I knew!) a hero who faced a similar adventure to Hannibal Barca's in the Almohave Empire (it starts in 1184, but you never know...) Apparently a cool Spanish character not widely known because he was a muslim. I thought it sounded cool enough to deserve a chance. The author is a Spanish Navy Colonel (which would be a Navy O-6 in the NATO ranking) and a specialist in the muslim world of the X, XI and XII Centuries.

They both look promising, uh? :-)

Finally I got a house of minibooks about farm animals for my little daughter-in-moon, just because...

So, do you have any book fair in May to celebrate this beautiful Northern Hemisphere Bealtaine-tide? Any comments on my selection of books?

Kallisti!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.