more fish books!

ha ha ha
your suffering will never end
poor readers of my currently fish-obsessed-blog

Just kidding! But really, I do have a new influx of fish books. I requested some from the library that are housed in other branches, and then ordered a handful off Book Mooch with excess points I've had floating around for ages. Because I thought I ought to have some reference on my own shelves, you know. And then yesterday my boyfriend surprised me with a gift of books (mostly about fishkeeping!) from a used book store he found just half an hour away. He said it's a wonderful place and he wanted to stay longer and he promised to take me there someday. I'm so tickled!

See the books! (Two top left were swaps; I have three more to come)

You can see the subject matter easily. A few demand mention. My boyfriend is Dutch and he knows I like plants, so there's this book on the history of the tulip craze in Holland called, appropriately, Tulipomania which looks very interesting. Also, he found this Gray's Manual of Botany. I doubt this will be actual reading material, it's more of a reference- over 1,600 pages of identification in the form of detailed written descriptions and the occasional line drawing. Quite a tome. This one has a sense of discovery with it, as someone used it to press newspaper clippings and colored foil candy wrappers. I've removed forty-six small papers from its pages so far. Not sure I've found them all yet!

But the one I really treasure (and I haven't even read it yet) is this little red book with a lovely embossed illustration of a male swordtail on the cloth cover: Aquarium Fishes in Color.

It's from the sixties, and full of hand-painted color plates. I just love looking at it. A few samples: