Went shopping in Wymondham today, and in the course of visiting 3 charity shops and one excellent second-hand book shop, came back with a book or two, or ten (oops).

All being book people (or ook person, in Ooktavia's case), I'm sure you'll all be dying to know what I've bought. And if not, I'm going to tell you anyway.

Men At Arms - Terry Pratchett. £1.95
Not a great fan but I do like Vimes and I've just finished reading Sarah's copy of 'Nightwatch'; a ruddy great hardback edition I've got to cart home in a rucksack with this lot.

Not In Front of the Servants-A True Portrait of Upstairs Downstairs Life.
- Frank Victor Dawes £2.95
Can't resist books about how other people live. My excuse is that it's research for my writing.

The Brains Trust Book £1.95
The Brains Trust was a radio show started in Britain during WWII to stimulate the minds of soldiers who were cut off from intellectual pursuits. Questions were sent to a panel of experts who argued about the answer. My book was publsihed during the war and a box on the cover states that the royalties from this publication will buy books for the forces.

The King of the Copper Mountains - Paul Biegel 40p
Translation of a Dutch childrens' book about an aging king who needs excitement to keep his heart going. His loyal servant, a hare, arranges for other animals to come in each day and tell a series of stories.

The Story of the Western Railroad - Robert Edgar Riegel £3.95
Does what it says on the cover. Useful research for my westerns

The Scandinavian Cookbook 40p
Published 1956 by the Culinary Arts Institute, Chicago, Illinois. You tell me how it got to a charity shop in a Norfolk market town. Anyone fancy Fruktsoppa ? - that's Swedish Fruit soup.

Ralph's party - Lisa Jewell £1.50
Novel about various people living in a house. First few pages seemed alright, and I hadn't bought most of the other books when I got this. Might read it here and give it back to a charity shop, rather than lugging it home.

Spin Again - £3.95
Nice glossy colour book about board games from the 50's and 60's. I've already got a book about games from about 1780 to the 50's, so this updates things. Rather worried about the 'Leave It To Beaver Money Making Game'. No doubt some parents had a good snigger over that one.

The Morecambe and Wise Special 60p
I adore Eric and Ernie and I've never seen this large softback before, so it goes straight into my E & E collection.

The Victorian and Edwardian Home from old photographs £3.50
What did I say about liking to know about other people's lives ? And of course this one's good for research too.
Wonder if I can claim anything back as tax expenses for my work ? Must ask Dad.

Also, not books but purchased today, four small, stylised brass owls for £3.75

An interesting and eclectic collection. I went shopping on Saturday and came back with a history of the British Raj by Lawrence James, The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (which is *terrific*) and (I know Ben will be interested in this one) a book about bloodfeud in Anglo-Saxon England.

Claire bought a vegetable mill. Search me.



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

Now, why would I be interested in that? (he says, rapidly hunting through google for a new curse)

A vegetable mill? Is that like a watermill or windmill, only powered by small carrots?



Post Edited (03-19-03 00:05)

PSD

==========

This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

jon tell me what you think of the years of rice and salt.
i think the idea was very good but the way it was written didn't appeal to me that much. i finished it and it gets slightly better, but i think it could have been done differently

My recent book buying has been decidedly odd. I put up new shelves over Christmas and decided to fill the top one with orange Penguin paperbacks - the older the better. Hence I've been going round charity shops specifically looking for orange Penguins...

up to a short time ago you could have found them in bookshops, but penguin is rejacketing all their classics now

Rob: didn't your mum give you a random orange book for your bookshelf?

my recent book buying includes:
the Road to McCarthy (annoying that I subsequently found it half price in Asda..)
Effendi (Jon Courtenay Grimwood. I may have mentioned that I quite like his stuff...)
Samurai William. the true story behind the guy Clavell based 'Shogun' on.

Carla;

I haven't finished 'The Years of Rice & Salt' yet, but I am enjoying it very much. I agree that at first the re-incarnation material seemed odd, but after a while I cottoned on to what KSR was trying to do. I like alternative histories, but there is always a danger that they become just that; a history, a dull account of one damn thing after another, and because the history isn't *real*, and therefore doesn't matter, even more dull than such things are in real life. Harry Turtledove is like that. The YoR&S attempts to make a credible (well, fairly credible ..... I'm not sure about that plague) and well researched alt history interesting by giving it this unusual slant (I don't want to give too much away here!) and once I'd suspended my disbelief high enough, it worked. Also, I know very little about Buddhism or Islam, and I found it very informative about them.

I like it; it's well written, intelligent, entertaining, the three central characters are well drawn and sympathetic, the history is fascinating, the philosophy informative without being overwhelming, it's got things to say without becoming a lecture .... recommended. I took it up a little doubtfully, because I found Red Mars quite frankly dull, but this is much, much better. It's something different, which is a rare thing in this predictable old world of ours.



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

Hmmm, not bought any new books recently (except a shiney new copy of TEA, to replace my old 1st ed. which I got signed and gave away...), but I am halfway through the Northern Lights trilogy by Phillip Pullman, (and why is it, all fantasy comes in trilogies? Never two books, or four. Ever. Strange that), which is pretty good so far.
As for "The years of rice and salt", I read it a while ago, and enjoyed it, but I've just not picked it up again, despite re-reading the Mars trilogy by KSR about 3 times since [I tend to re-read most books I like. Comes of not having enough money for new ones, and reading too fast not to].
I read 'Effendi' recently, enjoyed it, you can see a steady improvement in JCG's writing over all his books, in fact, it may be next on my re-read pile.

Miss Read books are classic orange Penguins and fairly easy to find in charity/2nd hand bookshops. Not to everyone's taste of course, but not as sugery-sweet as you might think. The first one I picked up, 'Village Diary' had an account of a WI pageant that was uncannily similar to the ones I was involved with, thanks to Mum.

JC-G is definitely improving. I started on 'Pashazade' ,which I thought was pretty damn good. Got 'reMix' and 'redRobe' for christmas, they're good, but not as good as Pashazade. He's getting better at endings, definitely. reMix had soo much promise, only to leave me with a 'what?' at the end.

Hoping Effendi is going to be even better than Pashazade...

Dave: Yes you're right. I can't remember what she bought. Some rubbish.

Carla: I know. I was going to buy copies of stuff I've read but didn't have myself - Steinbeck, Lawrence, Waugh etc. but they're now green paperbacks. Hence trawling round charity shops.

It's also interesting reading some of the prefaces written in the 50s to stuff like Wilkie Collins or Brontes and see how it's varied from what we think now.
One of the most entertaining is an early copy of Lady Chatterly from about 63 where some academic goes on for about 30 pages justifying the book as a love story and not smut. When you think about writers like Irving Welsh today...

One I'd really like is Scoop. I reread Brideshead (first time since my student days a long time ago) last summer and want to reread Scoop. Again, it must have been back in the 80's when I last read it.

Currently reading John Sergeant's autobiog (more memoirs really). Suitably entertaining anecdotes as you'd expect.

Rob: I think on ebay you might try and find some @#$%& stuff, i have a friend who collects any edition of "1984" he can get his little paws on and has found some @#$%& old ones on ebay.

jon: I guess I was just expecting something else. I did like the story and I did find it better towards the end, maybe his writing style just wasn't me...
I hald wanted to skip some of the bits in the bardo.

the last book I read was "embers" it was ok, nothing outstanding.

didn't want to use my brain a lot yesterday so i picked up an old proof of "the international gooseberry" which is ok, again nothing to write home about...

need to go through my proofs at home to see what i'm going to read next...

I've read two of the books I bought here in Wymondham.

Quite enjoyed Men At Arms, but not enough Vimes for me and the plot wasn't clear enough. Rather confused about exactly what was going on. Thought Night Watch was much better.

Ralph's Party was interesting. Interaction between people living in different flats in one house. Well-written, characters nicely distinguished and one turning out different to you would expect. The plotting of the different storylines was well done.

As I've got so much other stuff to cart back to Sheffield, I've given these two to a charity shop. I can borrow the Prachett from any number of friends, and Ralph just wasn't quite interesting enough.

I didn't know that you could get orange penguins, were they a limited run like mint kit-kats?

I preferred Guards Guards to both Men at Arms and Night Watch.

But that's just me. I love the idea of million to one shots working out nine times out of ten.

Ever tried non-orange, chocolate oranges ? The raspberry one was odd, the Christmas one managed to taste of mincemeat, raisins and too many cloves (for me). The white chocolate one was nice though.

White chocolate is always nice! I'm dreaming of a white chocolate, and the Milky Bars are on me!



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

I enjoyed Pashazade, but I'm waiting for Effendi to come out in paperback...

Rob: Sccop is currently published by Penguin (I bought it last Monday)

I thoroughly recommend the Mordecai books by Kyril Bonfiglioli - very black, very funny detective fiction. The jacket describes it as "jeeves and wooster meets withnail & I" Dunno about that, but its good.