Our local library has a cart near the front door in which they give away free books. Most of them are crap, but some are gems.
I just picked up The Teachings of Buddha , which I have read before, but what made this book so interesting is that it is bilingual: The left page is in English, the right page in Japanese. It is a Japanese publisher.
Now I want to see if I can fire up my aging neurons to learn Japanese.
Also picked up from the cart The Aeneid, which I read in college, but not sure if I have the energy to reread it.
Once had The Canterbury Tales with the Middle English on the left page and the modern English on the right. Amazing differences, but the Middle English is still parsable. Wonder what English will look llike in another 700 years, assuming people are still around.
Once I was trying to teach myself Russian — never got that far — but I had Gogol’s The Nose (Hoc in Russian; no articles in Russian) with English on the left page and Russian on the right. I was able to slog through it without too much translation. Wish I had pursued this, but at the time I had no time.
Once I had a volume of Abraham Lincoln’s speeches published in 1865 (!) that I picked up from some obscure bookstore somewhere. Lost it in some move or other.
A beautiful little small, hardcover volume. Wish I still had it.
