I’ve been taking advantage of the Autumn sunshine with a mini break in Wiltshire (I refuse to pander to marketing folks who want to brand such trips as staycations). I persuaded Mr BookerTalk that a visit to Bookbarn International (which claims to be one of the largest used book sellers in the UK) wouldn’t mean too much of a detour on our path to the renowned cathedral city of Salisbury. Actually I had no clue where this bookish heaven was located other than somewhere vaguely south of Bristol. But good old sat nav got us there easily enough and I prepared myself for a good couple of hours of mooching and buying.
What a disappointing experience. I’d sifted through my TBR and found a good armful of non fiction books I no longer wanted and thought I could sell. Their website promises this service but when I asked, the response was that I could donate but they don’t buy.
Further disappointment came once among the shelves. Filming for something or other was in progress so a good quarter of the place was shut off. The crew wasn’t actually using all the space for the film but if you’ve been around production teams you know they like to spread themselves and their equipment just about everywhere. And of course the area they had commandeered included the shelves I wanted. So it was fine if you wanted fiction by authors whose names were in the first half of the alphabet. But of no use for me in my quest for Zola or for any Virago Modern Classics which were also shelved in the restricted area.
The layout of the place wasn’t all that helpful either. The printed sheet detailing which shelf numbers contained which collections didn’t match the chalkboard descriptions on the end of each aisle. So looking for classics I found myself in ‘wine and cookery’. After much huffing and puffing I learned that they have recently reorganised the place but hadn’t got around to changing the blackboards. Not very impressed……
Did I buy? Yes but not anything I was desperate to get. I think I bought on the basis that everything was ridiculously cheap (£1 a book no matter how big and fat) and I’d got that far so I may as well buy something. I ended up with this collection.
Tony Morrison’s Beloved I’ve been meaning to read for some years. Cousin Bette is considered to be Balzac’s last great work with its themes of vice and virtue and the influence of money. Tigers in Red Weather got a lot of visibility when it was published two years ago – not sure if I will read it or just pass straight to my niece. I haven’t read a lot of Rose Tremain’s work so this pristine copy of The Road Home, a story of an immigrant from Eastern Europe, caught my attention. It was selected for World Book Night in 2013.
And finally, a book that I suspect most readers of this blog will not have heard of previously. Off to Philadelphia in the Morning by Jack Jones. Jones, the son of a Welsh coal miner, was a trade union official and politician as well as a novelist and playwright in the mid 1940s and 1950s. The novel gives a fictional picture of the early career of the composer Joseph Parry (who came from Jones’ home town of Merthyr Tydfil) as they move from the poverty of south Wales to the hardship of industrial America. Parry gained a reputation through his composition of Myfanwy (a song you’ll still hear today) and the hymn tune Aberystwyth, upon which the National anthem of South Africa, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika is said to be based. The book was an instant success – a highly successful TV film followed. I wish I’d bought this a week earlier and then I could have used it for the 1947 reading club run by Simon at Stuck in a Book and Karen at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings. Maybe they’ll let me sneak it in???
We're all friends here. Come and join the conversation