feather_ghyll

I have just returned from my first ever trip to Paris, where I was staying at a hotel that did not have Eurosport, sadly, so I couldn't watch the men’s US Open final. I really, really wish I’d been able to see it!

While there, I stumbled upon the famous Shakespeare & Co. That is to say, I meant to go there, but did so accidentally. It’s a cramped shop – too little space between the floor-to-ceiling shelves and too many of us tourists and bibliophiles shuffling through it. I felt obliged to buy something (in English, my French is about good enough to order food I want to eat these days). I popped into several bookshops – some catering for English readers, but quite a few definitely not - just because it's a compulsion of mine.

I visited a lot of touristy places and found quieter formal jardins to recover and in which I could read incongruous books such as the following

The Headland Mystery: Arthur Groom. The Children's Press.

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Madensky Square: Eva Ibbotson. Arrow, 1998.

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The Goats: Brock Cole. Cornerstone Books, 1989.

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I've just been rather busy and not reading what could be classified as Girls Own. The closest I've come to it was The Rag Bag Family by Yvonne Coppard, which is a children's paperback about thirteen year old Rita, who's life goes into turmoil when her grandmother, who has always looked after her, has a stroke and she is sent to a foster family. I thought it was well-written and liked the dervlopment of Rita. I also read Summer Love by Diane Schwemm, which is book 1 of a series set in 'Silver Beach'. I won't be rushing out to try to find the rest of the series. It's about families who go to the same lakeside resort every year, but it's the end of their childhood for siblings Elli and Ethan. Apart from freaking out about her own possible boyfriend and the realisation that adults are fallible, Elli's worried that Ethan is involved with her nemesis Charlotte. Despite the focus on boy-girl love, it is perhaps Elli and Charlotte's mutual obsession (Charlotte envies Elli's 'perfect' life) that drives the book. It was written in a really patronising font.

Otherwise, after finally using Watersones's online service (because their shops seemed to have stopped stocking anything I'd like to buy) in response to what could be termed begging e-mails - their wonderful hub (see The Bookseller) let me down.

I hope that a review or two will be posted here eventually, but life is still looking like being busy at present.

My parents know me too well. They got a hold of some second hand books, which included Shakespeares, and I have been assured that I will get a look-in on them next weekend before they are removed of. There is a Shirley Flight--Air Hostess among the bunch, and they promised that that would certainly be set aside for me. I don't think that I have it. I have hopes that there'll be more from this stash, but we'll see. The helium raising my balloon of hopes is that it was through similar means that I got a non Chalet School Brent-Dyer.

Also, a Borders is opening near me quite soon. It had been said to be coming for a while, but then it sounded as if the company was pulling out of the UK, so I thought it might not. But I saw it with my own eyes yesterday, and though there was no opening date on the massive posters in the window, behind them, I could see books on shelves. This suggests that 'soon' really is 'soon'.

It is within a couple of minutes' walk to the nearest Waterstones. I like Watersones well enough, I always have done since I first came across it - though in their lightness and airiness, Borders shops do score points. Admittedly, Amazon has stolen a march on any physical store, and my first-hand book purchases have always been rarer than my second-hand ones, but the competition may be a good thing. My experience of late has been of Ottakar's turning into Waterstones, which doesn't feel like that much of a change, and goes to prove how much of a clone/wannabe Ottaker's was. Anyway, on the few occasions I've been to Borders, I've liked the experience and bought a book there.

This Borders is even nearer to a second hand book shop that I feel I'll have to visit every time I go there. But that's a whole different issue. The thing I'll always remember about this shop is that I passed over a chance to buy The Blue Castle there, at quite a decent price.

(The next entry will probably be a review of 'Stanton's Comes of Age' by Sylvia Little.)