Impressive Finds

As a strict rule to myself, I wasn't collecting any books from the library (donation or otherwise), because space has become a problem. I finally decided to go against this principle when I discovered a copy of the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman.

In freshman year, our English class was assigned the ever-popular (to assign) Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. As a supplement to this, our teacher also offered a few graphic novels related to the Holocaust and survivor stories. Of these were Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, and Maus I and II.

I read Anne Frank, and Persepolis, but have yet to read Maus. If I like it, I'll donate it back to the library and recommend they secure the sequel, and if I really like it...I might keep it for myself.

Lately I've been doing a lot of reading of graphic novels...mainly Batman and other superheroes, I must confess...but it has still let me to believe that our local library doesn't have enough support for graphic novels. We may have one or two of them, and display a few issues of Shonen Jump, but we have yet to really get behind buying and displaying large amounts of graphic novels, in all forms.

Graphic novels usually get a bad connotation because of comic books, with their often violent and gaudy material. Peh. I say graphic novels have the capacity to be just as enthralling and "deep" as "real literature."  They should have a large support of our local library because graphic novels can be used as a very good transition into heavier reading, and getting teens interested in reading selections other than what the English teacher assigns.

Anyway, that isn't what this post was supposed to be about. The initial target of this post is about a thing of beauty that I found this weekend.

There was a community-wide garage sale on Saturday that lots of people get involved with. Rather than having our own sale though, my family and I decided to spend the day looking at other people's wares. I found one of our neighbors had an IBM Selectric in good condition, with a few font balls, too. I told our neighbor that if she didn't sell it, I might be interested--but manuals were my main focus.

About half and hour later I was walking down the street when I happened upon this sitting on a table.

It ended up being a 1950s era Smith-Corona, Skyriter. For a staggering $10! Of course, I bought it right on the spot, even when the lady selling it to me said the question mark key was broken (she found out that morning).

"You'll have to type in all sentences, you can't ask a question," she joked.

"I can just draw in the squiggle when I'm done typing," I replied.

Keep an eye out for what I'll be doing next with this fine piece of manual technology.