Antuhsa's Bibliophilic Adventures

It’s October, which means the time of month-long art and craft related challenges is upon us. When I was mindlessly browsing the internet, I’ve seen Inktober (for drawing with ink), Oiltober (oil painting), Kinktober (kinky fic writing) and Angstober (angsty fic writing), and those are only the ones I’ve come across. Even though all these October challenges can get a bit tiresome, I’ve decided to participate in one. Mine is called NaCraMaMo, which stands for National Craft-Making Month. The idea is to do something crafty every day throughout the month. There’s a community for this challenge in the journals, and as far as I know, that’s all there is, so it’s very small. I’ve been steadily doing crafty activities for the past 1,5 week and am enjoying it. Though I must admit that between bookbinding, which I’m doing three days a week now, and another favourite hobby of mine (cooking), which I’m experimenting with so often I might as well put my bed in the kitchen, it’s not that hard to do something craft-related every day.

Anyway, if you’re interested what I've been up to, feel free to take a look at my weekly posts in the nacramamo comm. I’m not going to be sharing more about the challenge on my own journal, because I’d like to take the opportunity to experiment with posting non-craft-related articles here, starting today.

I’m back with another book-related post. Last weekend I visited the Deventer Boekenmarkt (the Deventer Book Market), which takes place in Deventer once a year and is apparently the largest book market in Europe. I’m willing to believe that statement, because the market is seriously huge. Half the city centre is covered in stalls and you can find almost any type of book you can imagine there - comics, children’s books, leather-bound tomes from the 18^th century, popular novels from last year, art books, even pages from Medieval manuscripts if you’re lucky. Nothing too high-end though, since the market is outdoors and most stalls only accept cash, but there’s still more than enough to choose from. This was my second time visiting, and both times I only managed to go through about half the stalls before all books started to look the same. And before I ran out of money, that too. But it's ok. The market is just amazing. Imagine being with 120.000 other book lovers, who are all friendly and enthusiastic, and having a city all to yourselves. Isn't that great? If any of you ever has the chance to go, take it. It's just such a great experience. And there are plenty of English books for sale as well, so you don't have to learn Dutch first.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to share my purchases here. Mostly because I’m proud of what I bought and want to show it off. But if any of you happens to be interested in seeing what a stranger on the other side of the worlds spends her money on, that would be an added bonus.