When I was a kid I was an incredible nerd, even back then. My best friend at the time and I would walk to our local public library and buy old books and LPs from the sale room. I had an awesome collection of LPs; I had albums by Boston, Kansas, Elton John, Arrowsmith, the Mammas and the Pappas, and T.Rex. Sadly, somewhere during my stay at college my mother redecorated my room and threw out all my old records.
This weekend I was cleaning my bookshelves and came upon my old copy of A Farewell to Arms, my first, last, and only Hemingway. It seemed old, so I checked out the publication date: 1929. I did an internet search and discovered that on the dust jacket of my book Catherine Barkley's name is misspelled "Kathrine Barclay," and the legal warning was absent on the first page; "All characters and events in this book are fictional . . . " I am the lucky owner of a first edition, first printing of A Farewell to Arms.
Unfortunately, it's not worth anything. My copy spent a great deal of its life in the Golden Public Library. Now its first few pages are stamped with the images of Golden, old due dates, it has an old check out card, and nearly a century's worth of writing in the margins.
The used bookstore people don't even want to see my copy. Perhaps it will make a nice gift someday to someone who truly loves Hemingway in a way I never could understand.