Things We Collect- More than you could image

I am a genre book collector. I collect books on inland water travel, mostly non-fiction. I didn't start out thinking, oh boy, river travel! I read a book called "Drifting" by Stephen Jones in my early twenties and loved the book. I've read almost everything Jones has written. And just started randomly picking up a book here and a book there. The are the classics: Life On The Mississippi, A Week On The Concord & Merrimac Rivers, and lots of other interesting things. Its a bit of a random nonsensical hobby that takes you to odd places and odd times and odd voices. Just finished "Floating Island" by Emily Kimbrough (1968) and "Houseboat on the Seine" by William Wharton (1996). The first is a dated humorous account of a a trip on a river barge down the Seine and canals with a group of obviously middle-aged American sightseer types in the sixties. The book opens with the women complaining that they would have to wear slacks out of necessity on the trip.

The Wharton book is a history of his family's houseboat which he and his family lived in in Paris for a good portion of his later life. If you want to learn about houseboat maintenance and upgrade- this the book.

Neither were quite what I expected, but both entertained and made you smile.

She looks just as you would expect for the time. She also was the co-author, with Cornelia Otis Skinner, of ''Our Hearts Were Young and Gay,'' which was made into a movie. And she wrote for "Ladies Home Journal" (of course) and had a humorous radio program.

Wharton was a painter, his real name was Albert William Du Aime.

He lived on the river for years. At one point, after graduating from UCLA, he taught art in the LAUSD school system before running off to France.