The Library Held Me Captive

I had an hour in which to be productive while I waited for my supervisor to finish teaching a course so she could meet with me and clarify all the confusions that I inevitably find myself dealing with in my studies. 

So off I went to the Scottish Studies Library where I would find a desk in a nice book-ensconced haven of quiet and studiousness. 

Wait... books?

Mmm... books....


The studying didn't happen.  Let's just say that I started to notice pretty spines of books and began pulling them out and taking quick peeks between the covers, delighted at each new discovery.  It became a book exploring adventure!


The studying could wait...

 Due to a semester and a half of Gaelic, I can actually read bits and pieces of the left hand side of the page.  This is the sort of book I'd love to have because I could work on translating with a bit of help if I need it.

 I am not ashamed to admit that I judge books by their covers sometimes.  That is, when I'm hunting through the shops for old books, I want them to be pretty.  Fortunately, back in 'the day' books were often given beautifully textured covers that make modern printed works look shabby and careless.


The Scottish Library is filled with such delights.  And a lot of them have pictures!

 Scottish Kitchen... Scottish Kitchen... Recipes from Scotland... Scots Cellar?.... Whisky Men... Secret Still... there's a trend here...

 Oooh, a picture book!

 A place I need to find...

 Good old John Knox got a sketch.






And I am hoping to visit Iona shown on the right.  This is a good picture book!

 Shabby, but beautiful.

 It's a good place to study.... if you ever get around to the studying bit.

 You can go through the library and to get to the connecting townhouse and go up to the offices of many of the professors.  If a class is taking place in the Celtic Library, you have to go down two flights of stairs, through here, and back up two flights if you want to get to any of the rooms on the other side.

 Grimm's Fairytales in German! It's so... authentic!

 I found a mysterious card inside... mysterious because I can't read German.

I think I found Goldilocks...

 Strange illustrations in some of these...

 Manx fairytales?  I didn't know they existed!

 Gazing lovingly up at the shelves and shelves of beautiful books.

 I pulled this one off because it has a dragon inscribed on the spine!

 But when I opened it, I realized that the inside was even more lovely...

 These drawings are fabulous!

 After wrestling with textual analysis and theoretical approaches and interlace structure applied to Irish and Welsh texts, it's nice to just look at beautiful pictures and read through a fairytale or two.

Eventually, I realized that I had to get going or I would be late for the meeting that I was passing time in the library waiting for.  Considering how much help I need with my writing, that would probably be a bad idea.

So I left the tempting shelves behind...




...for now.