A Chance Find

The glorious sunshine yesterday propelled me into town yesterday, ostensibly to source a copy of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon for daughter #3, who is finding the endless vampire-fare supplied by the school library beyond a joke. She is mature for her age and has outgrown the standard parallel worlds/fantasy stuff written for her age-group, so I suggested that she might like to move more into adult fiction. She has enjoyed some of Neil Gaiman's work (although, interestingly, didn't much care for The Graveyard Book which was written with a younger audience in mind) and I think will like Sarah Walter's Little Stranger when the husband has finished with it*. It occurred to me that Curious Incident bridges the divide quite nicely and decided that I'd try to source a second-hand one from a charity shop. But, as I found last year with Foucault's Pendulum, although they are on the shelves in abundance when you're just browsing, they seem to absent themselves when being sought exclusively!

I found myself up Micklegate at the Oxfam bookshop (where, at last, there was one indeed) and decided to go a bit further up the hill to Ken Spelman's marvellous book emporium. The open fire glowed in the hearth and I trotted up the rickety stair to the Classics section. They must have had a new delivery of books because the first thing that caught my eye was a 19th century diglot version of the Sybylline Oracles, bound in leather. It was only a little over £10, so I picked it up - and then saw a Loeb edition of Herodian (although only the first volume) and I added that to the pile. Wandering over to the medieval section I found a Penguin Classics copy of The Letters of Abelard and Heloise....and then one of The Lives of the Saints. As the last two were only £1 each, I felt no jabs on conscience whatsoever, and the Herodian was cheap for a Loeb and would boost my 'collection'. There is something akin to a chemical hit in such serendipity and I couldn't wait to get to a coffee shop and unwrap the books, beautifully packaged as usual, in crisp dark green paper.....

* ....in fact the Dog, obviously bored, finished it (off) before he did. Curling up on the bed she literally devoured the first quarter of the book. Fortunately the Husband had already read beyond the destroyed portion, but its rather tattered and bloodied pages means that he can't whip it out on the train!!!

Metamorphosis I am Hoping for, not Dereliction.

I am rather sad at the demise of Borders bookshops as I have spent a lot of time (and money) browsing their shelves and drinking coffee in the in-store Starbucks of the York branch. It's rather unusual in that the back half of the building was originally a chapel, and the cafe area occupies the gallery that runs around the four walls in a squared-off oval.

Ever since he was very young, the Bright-Eyed Boy and I have spent many a happy hour peering over the handrail and playing our favourite game of 'Book Spotting' with a coffee/bun to hand. This consists of one party naming a book that they can see on the shelves on the floor below, which the other party has to locate and describe. Good for both observation and verbal skills, although we just enjoy it. We went to have a possibly final cup of coffee there today, but sadly found that the coffee-shop was shut for a staff meeting. I hope we manage to fit one more in before the doors shut forever. As a venue, it really does hold many fond memories for me and I hope that the building isn't going to be turned into yet another crappy cheap clothes shop. In truth, I guess I am partly to blame for the chain's demise. Although I have bought a lot of books from them in my time, in many instances the limits of stock, the esoteric nature of my wants, or simply cost, have driven me into the arms of online retailers. Which is where a lot of Borders' clientele have ended up, I suspect.
Mea culpa, Borders.
When I was browsing in town on Saturday, whilst waiting for daughter #3 to do her rowing training (in the boathouse gym, as the river has well and truly burst its banks) I went to a favourite antiquarian book shop, Ken Spelmans on Micklegate. This is absolutely lovely, smells just right (ever so slightly musty), is suitably poky and has an open coal-fire glowing in the back room. Up the rickety stairs there is a modest theology and classics section (always a few Loebs to be had) where I chanced upon a wonderful leather-bound copy of Donnegan's Greek/English Dictionary dating from 1837. I was severely tempted, but as it was a tome of considerable avoir du pois and I had only just started my two-hours' browsing, I regretfully put it back. However, when I thought about it over the rest of the weekend, I developed a terrible hankering for it (small Greek font has a strange effect on me). Monday (a teacher-training day) saw the boy and I legging back up the hill to snatch it gleefully of the shelf. I had previously told myself that it would probably have been bought (to guard against disappointment) but when I saw that it hadn't - well, it was like a real chemical 'hit'. The nice thing about Spelmans is that they wrap your purchases up in green parcel paper, so you feel like Mr Brownlow or some other Dickensian character as you walk out of the shop.
I have to admit to taking advantage of the 20% off sign in Borders and bought Alexander McCall-Smith's The Comfort of Saturdays, a Penguin Classics copy of Selections from the Talmud and an Oxford Classics version of Kafka's short stories. I whipped through the first in no time at all (and for a while found myself thinking in a similar fashion to Isabel Dalhousie: wistfully philosophic) and am dipping in and out of the second. I will read the third in dribs and drabs, as Kafka is far too weird to read a lot of in one go. We've been reading some portions of untranslated Kafka in the German Reading Skills classes and he is a most unsettling author. Nothing is comfortable or predictable. All is alienation and rejection. I remember borrowing Metamorphosis and other stories from the library in response to another (similar) author's work. Damned if I can remember who it was now!