CABINET OF WONDERS

(First of all, apologies for the silence. I’m new at this gig — finding interesting things to write about? eep! — and have been a bit busy with work and other things in addition, but really it is mostly me procrastinating. Have been reading a lot more lately, however, so things ought to be better.)

   I’ve just finished reading a delightful book. 84, Charing Cross Road is brief but delicious — and the best part is that every tiny sliver of it is true! In 1949, New Yorker Helene Hanff writes to London bookseller Marks & Co. looking for some difficult to find antique books. This blossoms into a twenty-year correspondence, originally only with the bookshop’s proprietor Frank Doel, but eventually with his family and nearly the entire staff of the shop. The book consists of many of their letters back and forth. Hanff’s letters are wry and funny, Doel’s are the embodiment of English politeness, and there is much warming of the heart to be had all around — and quite a lot of booklust for the bibliophiles such as myself, to whom descriptions of first editions, and, indeed, bookshops themselves, is a treat not unlike fine chocolate. Really, absolutely hunt down this book: it’s short, and is very nearly guaranteed to lift spirits on any occasion. There’s a wonderful film with Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft which, I confess, I saw many years ago (this makes me sound quite venerable in age, but I think I was eleven at the time — even then I was enchanted), and knew about the book mainly because of that. Honestly I have no idea why I’ve never hunted the book down before now, but it’s been quietly biding its time in my library, waiting for me to need it.

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