MY STRANGEST COLLECTION

consists of books that not in the first place are put together because of the authors or subjects, but of their bindings. I came upon these books when I travelled almost every week as an antiquarian to Brussels or Paris. And seeing the way these books were binded in different cloth or paper, I started rather to like them.
In Brussels many books were binded in what I thought was wall-cloth, many of these with flower decorations. There are abstracts too. Then of course there were marbling papers used to embellish the rather dull covers and colourfull batik I occasionally came upon.
Most book of my collection are writtin in french and here are some titles:
L'oiseau bleu, féerie, by Maurice Maeterlink
Les salons de Paris en 1889 by Claude Vento
Le vent dans les moulins by Camille Lemonnier
Le coeur innombrable, poems by Comtesse de Noailles
and many many more.
Today I took them all to the living room where I had made space in a bookcase with glass doors. After our moving they stood a bit forlorn and I thought it time to change that after the spring cleaning! Some bindings are nice enough but put together on the shelves their backs look gloomy, so I'll have to put some small cheerful objects in front of them.
It rains all day now, a nice opportunity!

My haiku:

Before books soon will
Disappear I care for them
How many words inside?

And the proverb from Chaucer:

Something is learned every time a book is opened.