Browsing the Bookshelves

I've had more emails from friends - old and new - today that I have in many a week. That should be a good thing. It is.  But somehow it has left me feeling a little low. Emails seem so cold and impersonal at times. It would be good to see people for real. Some are many hundreds of miles away; most a few hundred.  How come I live in one of the biggest cities in the world and yet most of oldest and dearest friends are so far away? I miss them, each and everyone.  But even those who are just a few miles down the road seem very far away at times.

And late at night I think of home, of how the golden fields will be swaying in the cool evening breeze, of the smell of damp grass and misty reeds.  The grand oak which filled my bedroom window with its 17 foot girth. The redwood pine which my Aunt brought back from Canada when it was about an inch tall now towers over that oak.  The horses will be asleep but if you were to walk pass them you'd catch that wonderfully rich smell of horse, friend and sweet sweat which takes me right back to childhood. I can picture the inky-black sky, crisp as glassine, with pin-prick stars dazzling. I know just how it would be to walk home late at night. I know just how cold the earth would be and just how the corn would crackle under my feet. I know every step along the last lane, approaching the farmhouse. I know where to put my feet on the verge to avoid the pit-holes and ditches. I know where to find the gap in the hedge to cut 500 yards off the trek up the hill, and just how low I'd have to duck to avoid getting brambles in my hair. I know where to find to sweetest blackberries - the ones know else ever finds. So why am here and not there?

If any one is interesting, this is where home is:

The Wood

Empty, isn't it?

I think I'm completely hooked on this bookcrossing thing. More releases, more books gone travelling. I have to keep checking the website to see if any one has registered finding another of my releases.  On the bookcrossing forum, some people report waiting months, in some cases years, to have one of their "gone travelling" books registered, so I reckon I was lucky to record my first "catch" in just 13 hours.  But now, of course, I'm impatient for more.  So, I'm surrounded with paper and scissors and pritt sticks, making little labels to put inside each new release.

I've enter gone an ordered a "release kit" all the way from the States, so that I can have swanky labels and attention grabbing stickers.  Three weeks to arrive - I can't possibly wait that long. My scissors will be blunt by then.

Any other bookcrossers out there?

I released two more books into the wild today, as part of the bookcrossing programme.  Both were left in the environs of Lewisham Hospital out-patients department, as I was there anyway for a CT scan. I reckon that folks in waiting rooms must be in want of something to read, if they haven't brought a book or magazine of their own, so hopefully these two will be picked up and enjoyed.

I'm still amazed at how quickly the first book I released, Edge of War, was picked up and registered.

Alternatively, you could try Edge of War here.

Bookcrossing Bookshelf

I'm very excited. I finally got around to joining Bookcrossing today and have released my first two books "into the wild".  Not very exciting books, but both a good read.  I left one on a park bench in Baxter Field, which is a small park in Sydenham, almost next to our house. I left the other on another bench at the end of our road.  I can't wait to see if whoever picks them up will register their find. I hope so.

If you don't know about bookcrossing, you really should check out their website. The concept is quite straightforward: if you have a book you know longer want to keep, you can release it into the wild for someone else to find and read.  All released books have a small bookcrossing label inside, which carries a code number. If someone finds the book, the hope is that they will log on Bookcrossing and tell and record that they have found the book - and hopefully add what they thought of it, and what they did with it once they'd finished.  That way, you can track the travels of your books around the world.

Bookcrossing Bookshelf

Well, the bookshop has been really buzzing this week - which is good news.  August is not usually a "hot" time for used book sales, but this year we seem to have managed to buck the trend. Long may it last.  I'd like it think that it's the result of some of the new features we've added to our website over the last few weeks but I don't have anyway to prove that.

But while we've been busy bees in the bookshop, the garden has been neglected horribly. If the plants havn't been dessicated by the heat, then they are rotting in the heavy rains of the last couple of days. And everything is running away and growing - mostly weeds of course.  And our old gardener is back in town and wants to see what we've done with the wonderful garden he designed for us.  He's going to be very disappointed, but hopefully that will inspire him to come and do some more work for us after his visit tomorrow.

You cannot conceive of the mess caused by spilling a large mug of hot tomato soup from a height of six feet on to tiled floor. I can, because that's just what happened. It slowly glouped out of the microwave, gaining speed as it ran down the fridge before plummeting onto the floor and splashing onto everything in sight - including my cat!  It got in the grooves of the fridge door, stained the grouting between the tiles on the floor, splashed up against the table, chairs, radiator, walls and kitchen cupboards, turning everything a rather frightening shade of orange.  And that was before the cat decided he'd had enough of free food - he's not supportive of vegetarians - and dashed up the stairs, heading for the cat flap, leaving a trail of orange splatterings as he tried to shake the damp, hot soup off his fur.  Before he got the top of the stairs, he worked out that shaking wasn't going to be enough, so sat down and started to lick, leaving a patch of orangey-dampness on the carpet, not the mention the little track of similar paw-prints at strategic places en route.  When he did squeeze out through the cat flap, he left a little orange circle, like a frame, around it and further orange splatterings on the flap itself.  I had no sympathy.

Husband, hearing the cuffuffle, comes tearing down and sweeps round the corner into the kitchen and doesn't immediately notice what's wrong. He only sees the mess shorting after his slipper makes contact with the orange pool still seeping across the tiles.  Bends down to remove his slipper and puts his hand out to support himself against the wall, which is of course covered with splattered soup. So now we have hand prints as well as paw-prints.

It took over an hour to clean it all up.

It seems like forever since we performed a serious update to our primary website (don't even mention the other one - it seriously needs an overhaul) but today I feel like celebrating. We've finally launched the results of a major project to enable readers - and hopefully prospective buyers - to locate books relating to local English history and interest more easily.  We have catalogues for each county - sounds straightforward, doesn't it? You have no idea!  Determining exactly what a county is not easy - traditional counties, historic counties, administrative counties, ceremonial counties all vary slightly. Some were never really fully defined and certainly never widely agreed. Even using modern "adminstrative counties" doesn't really work as many of England's larger cities don't fall within county limits, being what are termed metropolitan or unitary boroughs.  I hope we've come up with a list that suit all and make it much easier to locate really good books of interest!

Our catalogue notes provide an explanation of the history of county development and definitions.

We've also added a brand new page on collecting uncorrected bound proofs.  So I really havn't been as lazy as the absence of posts here might suggested.

Back to cataloguing.