Tuesday 24 June 2008

Book porn!

It's one of those strange weeks. My daughter is on holiday from work, which should mean no minding our grandson today and Friday and a nice few outings. We were off to Penzance on Monday, for instance, to visit relatives for the day. But you know what they say about the best laid plans? Our grandson went down with chicken pox on Friday which cancelled everything because not only is he contagious, we might be too and it's no use visiting people and giving them a present they don't really want! So. While waiting to see whether or not I have chicken pox I took a tour of the charity shops and market yesterday to see what book gems I could find to cheer myself up. And thus! some book porn.



This batch of five was on a table in the market marked 25p each or 5 for £1.

The Saffron Eaters is a book I've never heard of but I immediately realised from the title (the Cornish eat a lot of saffron cake) and the cover that it must be set in Cornwall. Indeed it is, a Cornish fishing village in fact, so I couldn't leave that behind.

Death Comes at the End is a totally unknown Agatha Christie book to me. But its background is ancient Egypt so I'm sure it'll be very readable.

The other two crime books, The Glimpses of the Moon by Edmund Crispin and Something the Cat Dragged in by Charlotte Macleod are likewise totally unknown but they looked interesting and at 20p if they're no good they can go to the charity shop.

Lastly, Behind the Wall by Colin Thubron is a travel book, set, obviously, in China.

For the princely sum of £1, I didn't think that was a bad haul.



And then I had a mooch around the charity shops and Waterstones.

Waterstones yielded the new issue of their excellent book magazine (which you get free if you have one of their loyalty cards) and I treated myself to Eldest by Christopher Paolini. I'm currently reading the first in this series, Eragon and like it well enough to buy the sequel. The cover alone is almost worth the money...

The charity shops threw up three gems.

Dragons of Spring Dawning by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, which is book three of the Dragonlance series, the first of which I read recently. Just have to find book two now.

Corsets to Camouflage is a non-fiction book which shows the role of women in the wars of the 20th century, by the renowned BBC war corresspondant, Kate Adie.

I think I'm most pleased with my last find. It's an omnibus edition of Wave me Goodbye: Stories of the Second World War edited by Anne Boston and Hearts Undefeated: Women's Writing of the Second World War edited by Jenny Hartley. The former is fiction and I saw it blogged about somewhere but can't remember where. I decided not to buy it on Amazon but wait and see if it turned up. Well it did. And not only did I get the book I wanted, I also got the second book which is non-fiction writings from WW2 and every bit as good as the first book. I'm well satisfied with that result!

So, without spending a fortune I cheered myself up considerably. (The trouble is... I also increased the tbr mountain by nine volumes!)

4 comments:

DesLily said...

I don't know what it is about book porn that just makes me smile!! Cheap or not I love looking at what makes others happy!

wow, I hope you can find Dragons of a Winter night so that you have the first trilogy!

BooksPlease said...

Pity about the chicken pox - I hope you're OK and the grandson,of course.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who keeps adding books to the already huge mountain of tbr books - these all look good. The Book People are selling 10 Agatha Christies for £9.99 at the moment, which I'm thinking of getting, but maybe you have most of them if not all.

Danielle said...

I love used book finds! Nothing better than cheap books. I'm going to have to chill a bit on all the book buying I think though. I've been very bad of late! So glad you found a copy of Wave Me Goodbye. I'm reading the stories as well, but my copy only has the one book. I'll have to look for the other that's included in your omnibus. And I hope you're chicken pox free!

Cath said...

Yes, I love looking at other people's piles of books too, Pat. It's a good job I don't know anyone with a big book collection, I'd probably be more interested in their books than them!

Yes, I just need the Winter book now and I'm quite confident of finding that before too long.

So far, we seem to be fine Margaret. I'm not counting chickens (sorry) just yet but am hopeful that we haven't caught chicken pox.

I tend to think there's always room for more books - which is nonsense of course! I'm now slotting them in between the top of the books and the underneath of the shelves.

Believe it or not I actually don't have any books by Agatha Christie apart from this one I just bought. I read heaps of books by her when I was a teenager but have never owned any. I know - bizarre.

Hi Danielle. Ah... I think it must have been your blog that I saw Wave me Goodbye on. I know I saw it on someone's blog. The other book is well worth searching out too. I've dipped into it and some of the journalism is superb.

So far we seem to be chicken pox free; I'm keeping my fingers crossed.