Sunday Market and Short Stories

As you have heard me go on and on about we are in the middle of winter. Being a motorbike enthusiast amongst other things I do not like this cold, wet weather. Sunday is usually our day for the club ride but this past Sunday was just that little bit too chilly to deal with.  For one all the clothes we have to wear weigh so much and I just didn't have the energy to put them on.

My good friend Kate rang me up and said it was a good day to do the Glenorchy Market with her 15 year old daughter. That sounded much better than wearing my weight in armor and gloves and helmet so we decided to meet out there.

The Glenorchy Market held every Sunday year around.

 For one you get homemade doughnuts for 6 for $2.00.  Also the coffee is hot and not too bad. Glenorchy is a 150 year old city that is just north of Hobart.  They have a huge warehouse on the showgrounds property and every Sunday is it turned into a market.  It is full of junk.  Nothing of great value here. It is dusty, has food vans parked around it, people who seem to be on their last leg at times and we love it. There are big tables of books and I usually find a Penguin or two.

The only Penguin I found this week was a reprinted Monica Dickens book I didn't have and as I don't buy reprinted Penguins for my collection I thought I would leave it there.  I know I didn't have it and the man selling it was trying to make a living and it was only 50 cents?  Do you think I gave in and bought it?  Yup.

However as we wandered around  eating our doughnuts and waiting to get a hot coffee and sit down and chat I came across another table with a few books on it.  It was a pretty book, looked like part of a set you would get through Reader's Digest or something like that. 

A beautiful, old book of short stories.

It looked new. I picked it up to leaf through it as Kate and Sarah were looking at clothes.  Turns out it was a 1947 book called A World of Great Short Stories edited by Hiram Naydn and John Cournos.

On the title page it states that it is 115 stories, the best of modern literature.  I looked at the copyright page and there were roman numerals MCMXLVII.  The book appears to be brand new, put away out of light, never opened, it practically cracked when I opened it.  I could not believe it was so old. Over 60 years old.  I wondered where it had been all these years. Probably on a farm property, in a big library with books that were never read or stored in the sun.  It was marked $4.00. The cover is beautiful and when I opened it up the short stories are from authors all over the world.  There are short stories from America (the book is American), Britain. France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Poland, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece, China, Korea, Japan, India, Iran, Arabia, Syria, Armenia, Turkey, Burma, Annam, Thailand, Phillipines, and one story from each country in South America.

Our deck of cards.

Then standing there looking through it I remembered the game that James plays with the deck of cards on his blog James Reads Books (here).

I began telling my friends about it and they thought that was a great idea so we said we'd look for a deck of cards at the market.  I found a big deck of cards for sale on one of the tables, extra large cards, and thought that was it! 

I brought my cards home and wrote the page numbers the stories begin on, two to a card and three page numbers on a few.  I shuffled the cards and put them back into the box.

The game is played like this:  Put the name of a short story or the page number where it is located in the book if only one book is used and shuffle the cards. Read the story that comes up and then write about it. The focus is one a week so you can read 52 short stories in a year.  I don't think I'll commit to a day, will just do when I have some free time and not working still on Moby Dick!

When I got home I was quite pleased with myself for finding such a gem of a book and a deck of cards all for $6.00.  What a cheap form of entertainment. Stay tuned folks and we'll find out if this book of stories is any good together.  Feel free to join me if you like. Something to get through the winter months and beyond.

Cousin Eddie, now 8 months old.

I had to include Cousin Eddie in this post. He loves the playing cards when they are shuffled in
front of him.  Maybe I'll let him pick the first short story we read.