BAD NEWS :)
Twelve years ago, when we bought this little apartment in Paris, I was totally invested in the doctoral program in Afro-American Studies at UMass, of which I was the Graduate Program Director. To fill the shelves here, I brought over a heap of books on Kant, which have sat undisturbed on the shelves all this time. Now that I have decided to deliver a semester long series of lectures on the First Critique, I realize that I need some of those books. I just made a judicious selection to bring home on June 14th. My luggage is going to weigh a ton!
Ship them.
ReplyDeleteWhen I needed to ship a bunch of books from Paris to USA umpteen (give or take) years ago I discovered Le Sac. International Postal Service is governed by international agreements which fix the rates for various services. When I schlepped 6 boxes of books to the local post office for shipping to NYC the clerk thought I was crazy to spend that kind of money--why not use le sac? What is that? Well, it's essentially a book rate, very very cheap. Only some post offices stock them. There is a literal sack (back then a large canvas bag-- think extra-large laundry bag) into which you dump the boxes of books. Some weeks later a very puzzled mail deliverer knocked on my NY apt. door with le sac. Since he had no idea what to with the sac (imprinted with the French post office logo) it was mine to keep. Turns out, international agreements being what they are, the reverse works too, though US sacks are far inferior.
Of course, if you can spend the money, FedEx is faster.
I was also going to suggest that shipping the books might be better. I'd check the baggage policy on the airline you'll use at least. (My wife was flying on Lufthansa recently and they wanted to charger her something like $85 for being just a bit over-weight on her bag. Thankfully we were able to switch something to her carry-on and avoid that.) I don't know anything about the service that David mentions (or the French postal system in general) but I have mailed books many times (including from Russia to the US) at an international "book rate" that wasn't very expensive - much less than going over the weight on luggage, or having to pay for extra bags, though if you have some sort of premier status on the airline you use, you might be able to avoid those fees.
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