Sunday 23 January 2011

Back to books

Last time I had to get a cab to a charity shop because there were too many to carry, and the nearest chazza is in South Woodford (amongst Leytonstone's many flaws is the lack of secondhand shops.) As I struggled through the door with my carrier bags, the woman behind the till glanced up uninterestedly and said 'We're overwhelmed with books at the moment. OVERWHELMED. We don't need any more.' I swore at her (under my breath, I am English and always polite) and took my custom elsewhere.

Anyway I think it's best to go back to leaving them on the tube one at a time.

Next up: The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Charles Dickens. Dickens snuffed it halfway through writing this gothic thriller, so it was more of a mystery than he'd intended.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson. Her breakthrough and funniest book. The others are pale imitations of Italo Calvino, I think.

4 comments:

  1. I can just see Ms Winterson on Late Review or the like, insisting that all her life she has set out to be a pale imitation of Italo Calvino, and that she is by far the greatest and palest imitation of Italo Calvino, far better than Margaret Atwood or Julian Barnes or Agatha Christie or Andy McNab or that tiresome charlatan Italo Calvino, who is a second-rate, positively permatanned imitation of Italo Calvino [sighs]

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  2. This sadly is true. There used to be a second hand book seller in Crouch End who made a living from paperbacks he got given by charity shops because they had no room for them.That wasn't really where I thought the proceeds from my donated books were going to go.

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  3. I kind of like her colossal ego, Tim. It's so very un-English.

    GSE I was in your old manor today, funnily enough (at a 2 year old's birthday party, it was your worst nightmare.) I ended up buying two more books in a Crouch End charity shop - couldn't resist a Puffin 1960s edition of Ballet Shoes and a tatty hardback sequel to the Swish of the Curtain - and thus replacing the ones I left on the tube on the way there. *sigh*

    Also, Prospero's Books appears to have closed down. Boooo!

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  4. Drood is the only Dickens book I've read. Where should I start?

    Incidentally, bookwise, am currently swep' away by Mary MacCarthy's The Group. My God. That's all I'll say.

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