There is cause for celebration...sometimes

I've stumbled upon a paperback of Henry Adams's Mont St. Michel and Chartres in the Booksale bin priced at a lowly P15.00. It is my second copy of the book but it saddened me to see it there in the "below P35.00 bin" probably written off by the people at the second hand book shop as unknown, so I bought it.

My first copy of the book is from my mother. She won it from some contest on the radio program the Voice of America. It was from that book that I've discovered Henry Adams so that when I discovered his autobiography work at the USC library, I read it like a supposedly long lost niece should read about a long lost uncle. And it was exactly how I read his autobiography book, as his niece, still his niece, because when you read his book Mont St Michel and Chartres, he invited you to pretend to be his niece or nephew accompanying him in his tour of the Gothic churches of France. The copy I bought recently do not have accompanying photos in them unlike my old copy which had black and white pictures of the exterior and interior of both churches. I have since saw several colored pictures of these churches but when I read the book, I wished that the reference photos were colored so I could not just understand but would actually see what he meant when he described the beauty of the large rose stained glass windows of Chartres.

And if you are the kind of niece or nephew who happened to love architecture or if not, a devotee of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the book is an absolute revelation. It made you love ancient architecture if you're not an admirer of its grandeur yet and it made you revere the Blessed Virgin Mary more if you've already loved her and if not yet the book made you understand to say the least the devotion of Her followers.