Walking home from the cafe the other night, I found a half dozen cardboard boxes of books set out at the street corner two blocks from my apartment.  Someone was moving out and discarded a selection of their book collection.  Whoever it was had pretty eclectic reading tastes: the boxes were full of philosophy and politics and vintage copies of paperback fiction and foreign-language art books.  (Just like looking through other people’s bookcases, it’s awfully interesting to flip through boxes of someone’s discards.)

I was already trekking home with a bottle of wine and a laptop, but I filled my arms with a dozen street books.  I’ve already been tucking into Dorothy Parker and Salinger’s Franny and Zooey.  And there’s this wonderful drawing from a 1954 art book:

Life has been pretty tough lately.  But every so often even in the midst of terrible times, there’s the alchemic gift of street books.