The local public library has an active book store right inside the front door, with additional shelves for less expensive books in the lobby, and often a rolling cart for free books located outside. In this last place, last year, I found a copy of Richard Halliburton's Royal Road to Romance, published in 1925 (the same year my father was born), in excellent condition. Having heard of it before, I took it home and began reading it in the bathroom. I left it there overnight, with disastrous results - after almost a century of safely knocking around, it was attacked by cockroaches! Their vandalizing mandibles spoiled the book's spine, so that I had to make a paper book cover for it. This seems to be a common problem with other books from the early part of the past century - I have a 1930 Encyclopedia Britannica that suffered a similar fate. Needless to say I totally bugbombed the house soon afterwards.

The book itself wasn't so great. The author comes across as a self-centered assoul, there was nothing particularly romantic about his adventures across the Asian continent. He was quick to exploit the hospitality of white people he met, and his treatment of non-whites was astonishing even to me - your average Woke progressive would be foaming like a rapid beast. But that was all right, he had just graduated from Hahvahd University with a degree in economics or something useless.

A scan of the violated spine appears in my Scraps section (https://www.furaffinity.net/view/56174797/).

Has it really been a year since my last post here? Among other things, I have one successful event to report - my last cataract surgery took place late last year and now I can see without glasses - or at least everything beyond a couple of feet is clear; I need "readers" for anything closer.