My rating:

add to my books

84, Charing Cross Road

by Helene Hanff

4.16 · rating details · 7,019 ratings · 1,187 reviews

It all began with a letter inquiring about second-hand books, written by Helene Hanff in New York, and posted to a bookshop at 84, Charing Cross Road in London. As Helene's sarcastic and witty letters are responded to by the stodgy and proper Frank Doel of 84, Charing Cross Road, a relationship blossoms into a warm and charming long-distance friendship lasting many years.

Paperback, 97 pages

Published October 28th 1990 by Penguin Books (first published January 1st 1970)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows

Stories For Book Lovers

14th out of 495 books — 1,300 voters

Books about Books

11th out of 352 books — 458 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 12,187)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Feb 15, 2011

Jeanette rated it

Shelves: nonfiction, booky-books, five-star-nonfiction

"If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much."

This was my second reading of the book, and I'm adding a star to my original rating. I laughed a lot harder this time, and even got a little choked up near the end. I don't recall this much chortling, cackling, guffawing and snorting on my first time through. The contrast between Helene Hanff's brash American informality and Frank Doel's staid British professionalism is delightful. There...more

like 8 likes

· see review

Nov 14, 2009

Amanda rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, 2009

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. 84, Charing Cross Road is a collection of letters between Helene Hanff and a group of people in London. The bulk of the letters are to Frank Doel, one of the proprietors of the bookshop at that address. However, there are letters to other employees at the shop, plus members of Frank’s family as well. The letters start in October 1949 and go through October 1969.

When I received this book, it was a lot shorter than I expected. I’d only discovered recently that it was nonfiction rather th...more84, Charing Cross Road is a collection of letters between Helene Hanff and a group of people in London. The bulk of the letters are to Frank Doel, one of the proprietors of the bookshop at that address. However, there are letters to other employees at the shop, plus members of Frank’s family as well. The letters start in October 1949 and go through October 1969.

When I received this book, it was a lot shorter than I expected. I’d only discovered recently that it was nonfiction rather than fiction, and that it was in epistolary format. I admit, at first I wasn’t thrilled with the book when I began to read it. I kept forgetting to look at the dates, so time would pass more quickly than I’d realized and I’d have to go back. Plus, I really didn’t understand Helene’s voice. She came across as brash and strange to me, the worst sort of American. Towards the middle, however, I realized it was a joking voice, and that I’d been taking her too seriously. Once again, I’m sure this was a problem with me reading so fast during readathon. This is a book I definitely want to revisit, though I probably wouldn’t have except for the end.

Spoilers going forward, so please skip if you don’t want to know.

The reason this book really struck a chord with me instead of being forgettable was the abrupt end to it. Somehow, though I hadn’t thought I’d cared much about these people at all – I hadn’t gotten to know them well enough through letters – when the sudden letter came that Frank had died, I had a jolt of tears come to my eyes. I hadn’t realized their correspondence stopped because of death! I should have, but I didn’t. For twenty years, these two people wrote back and forth, never meeting, never talking about much other than books, and yet they formed this longterm friendship that devastated me with its end. I hadn’t realized how powerful the book was. It crept up on me. I want to go back and read this more slowly, paying more attention to the dates and the side characters that only got a letter or two dedicated to them. I want to understand more about these lives.(less)

like 6 likes

· see review

Aug 27, 2008

Kirk rated it

Shelves: sentimental-faves

Good friends of mine, Dan and Sandy Kendall (whose brother used to be married to my aunt) recommended this short, epistolary romance to me. I read it in one sitting---it's that quick (clocking in at 95 pages) and, yes, that lovely. It's a nostalgic book, reminding one of a time when the thought of love and friendship blossoming over talk of the Collected Works of Walter Savage Landor didn't seem precious. The basic premise is that a New York bibliophile strikes up a relationship with the staff a...more

like 8 likes

· see review

Sep 13, 2011

Aldrin rated it

Recommended to Aldrin by: Chachic

The present is an undeniably significant time in the realm of books. It’s a time when the nature and limits of books are being redefined so aggressively that to enclose the very term in scare quotes does not necessarily amount to a vagary in punctuation. The mostly static evolution of books is now approaching a flash point, that is, if it hasn’t yet been reached. The signs are as clear as Truman Capote’s favorite Russian vodka. Accompanied by the consistent rise in the sales of books in their va...moreThe present is an undeniably significant time in the realm of books. It’s a time when the nature and limits of books are being redefined so aggressively that to enclose the very term in scare quotes does not necessarily amount to a vagary in punctuation. The mostly static evolution of books is now approaching a flash point, that is, if it hasn’t yet been reached. The signs are as clear as Truman Capote’s favorite Russian vodka. Accompanied by the consistent rise in the sales of books in their various electronic iterations, Kindles, iPads, and Nooks are taking the place of the codex format in the hands of readers. Bookstores, if not downsizing their personnel or reducing their floor area, are shutting down their operations entirely. It’s a terribly different landscape from that of two, three, or four decades ago, when books were books (prefixes like “e-” or “enhanced” and suffixes like “pdf” and “epub” were not yet conceived and required as qualifiers), bookstores were brick-and-mortar establishments run by real people, and a certain book lover had to write to a bookseller thousands of miles away just to get the books that she wanted.

The present is a setting into which the reappropriation of the essential elements of the story of “84, Charing Cross Road,” one of the most beloved books about books and people who love them, is virtually impossible. This nonfiction book, first published in 1970, is very much a product of its time. Formally it’s a collection of letters between a struggling freelance writer in New York City and a used bookstore employee in London. Letters! Do people even send those—old-fashioned snail mail—anymore? Surely e-mail, Twitter, or telepathic grunting hasn’t completely replaced it? LOL colon capital P. And a used bookstore? In this day and age, more and more readers are wont to ditch a visit to a nearby bookstore, used or not, knowing they could easily get a copy of a book they want with just a click of their computer mouses or a tap on their touchscreen devices.

Helene Hanff, the person at the American side of the transatlantic correspondence that forms the spine of “84, Charing Cross Road,” had neither a computer mouse (unless it’s of the rodent sort, to which her modest apartment might have proved comfortable) nor a touchscreen device. What she had in the way of an input mechanism and a processor was her trusty typewriter, on which she wrote on the 5th of October 1959 a letter of inquiry to the staff of Marks & Co., a used bookstore located at 84, Charing Cross Road, London, England. “I am a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books and all the things I want are impossible to get over here except in very expensive rare editions, or in Barnes & Noble’s grimy, marked-up schoolboy copies,” she explained. “I enclose a list of my most pressing problems. If you have clean second-hand copies of any of the books on the list, for no more than $5.00 each, will you consider this a purchase order and send them to me?”

Thus began the exceptional long-distance friendship between Hanff and Frank Doel, the chief agent of the bookstore who rigorously responded to her inquiries. Indeed, there were many more inquiries beyond Hanff’s initial wishlist, for books ranging from the perennially popular to the incredibly obscure. Her incessant badgering about the books that Doel had so far failed to send coupled with his meek apologies for his apparent idleness is the source of most of this book’s lighthearted humor. It’s often entertaining to flip from a page containing Hanff’s jocular remarks into another with Doel’s shy reply. On one occasion she, having been hired as a scriptwriter for a murder mystery TV series where “all the suspects and corpses are cultured,” asked whether he would want to be “the murderer or the corpse” in an episode she’d like to do “about the rare book business in his honor.” A month and a half later he replied, “Your Ellery Queen scripts sound rather fun. I wish we could have the chance of seeing some of them on our TV over here—it wants livening up a bit (our TV I mean, not your script).” Whereas Hanff was of frank and lively disposition, Doel’s manner, as behooved his Britishness, was formal and precise, especially at first and sometimes to a fault. “I keep trying to puncture that proper British reserve,” Hanff wrote in a letter to one of Frank’s co-workers, “if he gets ulcers I did it.”

That letter was one of the many others which were not addressed to Doel but were included in the collection as they greatly supplemented the two main correspondents’ bookish banter. Soon after the first few exchanges between Hanff and Doel, other employees of Marks & Co. and members of his family became pen pals with her and offered their thoughts on a variety of topics, including the British royalty, postwar deprivation, Yorkshire pudding, and, of course, Doel himself. Also included were several letters from Hanff’s friend, Maxine, who had the chance to visit the bookstore at 84, Charing Cross Road: “It is the loveliest old shop straight out of Dickens, you would go absolutely out of your mind over it.” To be sure, Hanff did go out of her mind in her reply to Maxine, where she expressed her deep longing to see and smell the shop herself.

Redolent of obsolescence (or is that nostalgia?) from the standpoint of a twenty-first century citizen (or netizen, as it were), the correspondence between Hanff and the people of 84, Charing Cross Road, which lasted for an amazing two decades, is above all symptomatic of a condition that was in full sway then among the more dedicated of readers but is arguably less prevailing now in the digital era: bibliophilia. “I never knew a book could be such a joy to touch,” Hanff wrote a month after sending out her first letter, upon the arrival of a proper match for one of the items in her list. It’s titled “Virginibus Puerisque,” the first collection of essays by Robert Louis Stevenson, which, Hanff told Doel, was “so fine it embarrasses my orange-crate bookshelves, I’m almost afraid to handle such soft vellum and heavy cream-colored pages,” and was in stark contrast to “the dead-white paper and stiff cardboardy covers of American books.” Ah, the visual, tactile, and sometimes olfactory pleasures of book porn. Imagine a present-day Hanff experiencing a similar high from caressing and staring at her Kindle after successfully downloading the same Stevenson collection in e-book format from Project Gutenberg for much less than $5 (read: free). You can’t. You just can’t, for there are “book” lovers, and then there are book lovers. And Hanff, belonging to the latter sort, would sooner defenestrate the Kindle than read a “book” on it.

—
Originally posted on Fully Booked .Me.(less)

like 7 likes

· see review

Oct 08, 2007

Anne rated it

I was introduced to this book many years ago as a child. I remember just loving it. It is a collection of letters from the late 50s through the 70s between the author, Helene - a writer in New York, and Frank Dole - an antiquarian bookseller. Helene begins in search of rare titles, which Dole doggedly tracks down for her. As their correspondence continues, an interesting friendship develops. Helene sends packages to the bookstore, to be shared by the other workers there. And eventually, she begi...more

like 7 likes

· see review

Apr 02, 2007

Jay rated it

Recommends it for: Romatics who don't require romance

The best documentaries are the ones that filmmakers never intentionally set out to make. 84, Charing Cross Road is sort of the literary equivalent to me. Neither of the penpals could have had the foresight to know how deep of a relationship they would forge. Thanks to the prevalence of carbon paper at the time, their timeless correspondence was preserved. I've read this classic four times and it never gets old. It reaffirms my faith that people (strangers) can do great and noble things.

like 12 likes

· see review

Apr 21, 2009

Melanie rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: re-read, gift-i-received

I know it's kind of pathetic that I continue to re-read books, but I was at a low point several weeks ago and needed something to help cheer me up.

84, Charing Cross Road is a charming book, and as I was reading, my fellow bus and metro passengers may have been wondering why I was smiling so much.

Actually, my volume has two parts: The first is 84, Charing Cross Road and the second is The Duchess of Bloombury Street. The former is the correspondence between Helene Hanff (...more

like 3 likes

· see review

Jan 01, 2009

bookczuk rated it

Shelves: bookcrossing, biography-autobiography-or-memoir, favorite-author, first-novel-or-book, home-library, made-me-look-something-up, places-i-have-been, satisfying, moxie-review

One of my alltime favorite books. Through the actual letters between a used book store in London and an avid reader in the US, it is possible to get a glimpse of the world in 1949 and after. I always find myself fascinated by the correspondence and daunted by Hanff's reading list. Here's a partial list of the books mentioned in the book. Maybe I should use it as my "I need to read these books" list?

Partial list of the books Helen Hanff ordered from Marks & Co. and menti...more

like 7 likes

· see review

Feb 19, 2010

Hazel rated it

Shelves: non-fiction

Devoured this last night. I'd seen the movie, with Anne Bancroft as Helene, but until a friend recommended it, hadn't thought about the book. Thank you, Jamie, it was fabulous. Initially I thought it was amazingly crafted fiction. It took me a while to realise the letters were real. How revealing these brief interactions can be. I'm not convinced though, by the cover blurb which describes the relationship as a 'love affair'.

As usual when I read books about books, I found myself notin...more

like 2 likes

· see review

Jan 25, 2008

Capitu rated it

This is one of my all times favorite books. I have re-read it too many times to keep track, and I have given many copies to friends.

I find it uplifting when I need something upbeat to read. It is also perfect when I have just a couple of hours to devote to a book. But its size - so short - is no indication of the richness in it. This collection of letters between strangers reveals so much about them and the lives that they led: dreams of travel, love of books, financial troubles, so...more

like 5 likes

· see review

May 12, 2008

Chris rated it

If you love books, you MUST read this one! The letters that Helen and Frank (and the others) write back and forth tell the story so much better than any attempt at narrative form would have. You can't help but fall in love with everyone, and knowing that it's a work of NON-fiction just makes it all the more perfect.

I had wanted to get my hands on this book for a v. long time, and I'm so glad that I finally did. (And I couldn't have picked it up at a more perfect place--a library b...more

like 8 likes

· see review

May 15, 2007

Lily rated it

Recommends it for: Anyone that is sentimental and romantic

Shelves: suggested-by-a-friend

This book was suggested to me by Mel, my German friend. We have a sort of transatlantic book club going on and she was really surprised that I had never even heard of this book, or the movie that was made from it! This book is a collection of letters between an American Woman and the employees of a rare book shop in London. The letters span from the late 1940s to the early 1960s and as someone who loves writing and receiving letters, I found it incredibly interesting to read the correspondenc...more

like 3 likes

· see review

Aug 22, 2008

Trevor rated it

Shelves: literature

I love this book and love the film they made of it too. It is sloppy and sweet and warm and, you know, just right. It is the sort of book one could read in an hour or two over a pot of tea on a cold winter's afternoon and just enjoy. Pure delight.

If you needed to be reminded that love of literature is as good a foundation of love of the world as any other 'religion', that the people we write to can be closer and dearer to us than those we see day after day - then this really is a ...more

like 16 likes

· see review

Sep 09, 2011

Kathryn rated it

Recommends it for: Highly recommended to anyone who love books, letters or England

Recommended to Kathryn by: Jeannette

Helene was disgusted with American books lacking quality and availability, especially for the older books she so craved. When she wrote Marks and Co. in England, hopeful of finding a used book she desperately wanted, she found much more. She found a whole group of people who became her friends and who beckoned her to England.

Here is selected correspondence from a nearly twenty year friendship between American writer Helene and British bookstore employee Frank that began in 1949. ...moreHelene was disgusted with American books lacking quality and availability, especially for the older books she so craved. When she wrote Marks and Co. in England, hopeful of finding a used book she desperately wanted, she found much more. She found a whole group of people who became her friends and who beckoned her to England.

Here is selected correspondence from a nearly twenty year friendship between American writer Helene and British bookstore employee Frank that began in 1949. It's fascinating not only to see the development of their relationship (and how Helene's charming letters and generous nature prompted others to write her, too) but also the course of history since we begin so soon after WWII. Helene sends the gang and Marks and Co. some much welcomed food since England was still under war rations; in turn, they send her a gorgeous antique book ;-) Fascinating to think that her last letter to Frank was in 1969, so many changes over those two decades!

I loved this book! It's hard to describe it in words because I think much of the beauty of it is the "voice" of the characters, how their personalities just sparkle off the page and I really felt that I came to know them through reading their letters as, indeed, they came to know one another only through letters. Helene seemed like quite the individual and I can just imagine the expression on Frank's reserved British face when he first got her letters which were so unabashed, full of letters in all caps, and multiple exclamation marks ;-) Yet, he did understand her, and I loved how, over the years, his letters lost much of their formality (especially in the very official business-y closing he insisted on using for the first two years!) and he eventually joined his family and co-workers in signing off by "sending his love" to Helene. Letters can be powerful and magical things! I've known a few people who never understood how I could consider my pen-pals "friends"; "but you've never *met* them!" the naysayers cry in disbelief. There is an old quote that says, "More than kisses, letters mingle souls." I think that can certainly be true in a romantic way, and can also be adapted to something like, "More than face-to-face visits, letters mingle souls" and applied to friendship, as well.

Highly recommended to anyone who love books, letters or England! I fit all three and am so happy my friend Jeannette's urging finally got me to read this gem!(less)

like 12 likes

· see review

Aug 09, 2007

Mandy rated it

Recommends it for: writers, readers, book lovers and london-lovers

Nonfiction. An easy read for an evening with tea and biscuits. Helen Hanff writes letters to a bookseller at 84 Charing Cross Rd. requesting he send her various copies of books (classics). While they converse over the course of decades via mail, both letters show the cultural differences of the U.S. and the U.K., as well as reflect the wartime atmosphere in London. Great read.

What's even better is I purchased a book while in london on Charing Cross road. It's my new favorite.

like 5 likes

· see review

Dec 06, 2008

Rissie rated it

This book reminds me of the process I go though when buying used books online.

• The book I really want is out of print.
• I order online from a seemingly reputable seller.
• The book does not come as soon as expected and I email to find out what’s going on.
• The seller emails to say that the book has been sent and should arrive any day.
• The book finally arrives in perfect condition and I feel guilty for only having spent $2 on it. Five stars!
• I order ...more

like 6 likes

· see review

Feb 09, 2012

Troy rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, reading-group, re-read

**SPOILERS**

If you’ve anything approaching a love of books and reading it would be hard not to enjoy this short volume of carefully selected (and I imagine, carefully edited) correspondence between Helene Hanff, a New York script reader/writer, Anglophile and bibliophile, and Frank Doel, assiduous employee of “Marks & Co., Booksellers” in London who supplies Helene’s request for good, clean second hand (and often antiquarian) books. Their letters commence towards th...more

**SPOILERS**

If you’ve anything approaching a love of books and reading it would be hard not to enjoy this short volume of carefully selected (and I imagine, carefully edited) correspondence between Helene Hanff, a New York script reader/writer, Anglophile and bibliophile, and Frank Doel, assiduous employee of “Marks & Co., Booksellers” in London who supplies Helene’s request for good, clean second hand (and often antiquarian) books. Their letters commence towards the end of 1949, and once Helene discovers England is still on food rationing she begins to send relief parcels of meats and eggs to Frank and the other employees of the bookstore. Thus commences a 20 year epistolary relationship, Helene’s generosity seemingly permitting ever greater extravagance in her wittily astringent but good-natured digs at Frank’s sense of British propriety (interestingly, if was Hanff who never had a romantic relationship during her life, while Frank re-married after the death of his first wife and had two daughters) and tardiness in satisfying her far-flung book requests. Sadly, Frank Doel died before Helene could make it to her beloved England to visit. The letters have been judiciously selected to provide a taut but redolent storyline – this necessary because the book could have quite easily slipped down the nostalgia slope. Helene’s bracing tone and humour is key here as well.

Writing about this book today, it is difficult to resist a spot of amateur sociology. Personal letter writing, symbol of Victorian wealth, individualism and an efficient postal service – and a practice largely coterminous with the rise of the novel – seems to find one of its last embodiments in Helene Hanff writing from (and reading alone in) her shabby New York bed-sit. She is an advocate of self-teaching. During the years spanning her correspondence with Frank Doel, America’s post-war sense of self-worth would begin to erode: Rosenburg, Stalin’s atom bomb tests; and reassuring values would be undermined by changing technology, new perspectives (Marshall McLuhan) and the ascension of popular culture (it is telling that in one of his final letters, Frank tells Helene that he likes The Beatles). From this perspective it is inviting to view these letters and the bond shared by Helene and Frank, broken upon his death, as a meditation on – tinctured by lament for - a world passing… “You see how it is, frankie, you’re the only soul alive who understands me”… and how that world is reconstituted imaginatively in/by desire and books. In the final letter, written to a friend travelling to her long-idealised London, Helene admits that the “England of English literature” may or may not in reality exist, but that “Looking around the rug [in my book-laden flat] one thing’s for sure: it’s here”.

As a curious aside, my work colleague worked at 84, Charing Cross Road - when it was a music shop, apparently. There you go.

____________________________________

My edition also contains “The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street”, the diary Helene Hanff kept when she did get to England in 1971. To a certain extent the diary gives the lie to the brash swagger of her letters; here Helene is off home turf, not in the best of health and, despite a few cranky spats and quips (I love her teaching the barman how to pour a Martini!), vulnerable - that is to say, she is all the things that can be read between the lines of the patter of her missives to Frank Doel. And for that reason, “The Duchess of Bloomsbury” doesn’t settle at the height of its predecessor. The absence of Frank Doel’s voice backlighting Helene’s also planes away some of the depth and counterpoint found in the letters. But that isn’t to say the diary doesn’t make good reading. Or even necessary reading following “84 Charing Cross Road”; to cast things in terms Hanff may have appreciated, these diaries are to the letters what Edgar’s reign was to Leer’s: the famous book shop has been gutted, the Midsummer Night performance is gauchely harlequinesque, Stratford is a tourist trap and Oxford won’t let visitors into its halls. Even Dora and Sheila (Frank’s wife and daughter) are rather ordinary if kind, and Helene herself, in the shadow of Vietnam, no longer feels buoyed by the short-lived, post-WWII pride in American-ness. But she is on holiday and generally having a smashing time, and of course there are moments of epiphany when she receives that sense of humanity-polished tradition of which she craves confirmation and that she imagines fosters the kind of learning and literature she loves. Still, one gets the feeling that this is a version of England which will survive best in the groundless orbit of her reading.

(less)

like 1 like

· see review

Feb 02, 2012

Bonnie rated it

Shelves: books-about-books, non-fiction, read-in-2012, favorites

Interested in more of my reviews? Visit my blog!

4.5 stars

84, Charing Cross Road is a truly delightful true story of friendship retold through a series of letters that were written between 1949 and 1968. The friendship between Helene Hanff and Frank Doel developed after Helene had sent a request for a specific list of books to Marks & Co. in London. From there, the correspondence continued over the years between the two but also between the other employees of M...more

like 5 likes

· see review

Oct 12, 2009

Patricia rated it

Shelves: booksaboutbooks, britain

Hanff's bookseller, Frank Doel must have had some patience as well as an appreciation for her wit. I can understand his decorous silence after some of his hard searched acquisitions met with laments. However, even Hanff's howls of disappointment generally come across as refreshingly passionate, witty, and sympathetic to anyone who has been pining for a certain volume. I savored Hanff's vividly conveyed pleasure as the books arrive and she lingers over details of binding, cover, and paper. The l...more

like 1 like

· see review

Mar 14, 2010

Najibah rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: every book-lovers

Shelves: books-on-books, read-2010, in-current-library, epistolary

Buku ini antara yang paling cepat saya habisi tahun ini. Beberapa hari tak berpisah dengannya, malah sempat mencatat nota panjang, hati berasa sangat lapang. Paling seronok, buku ini turut memuatkan diari Helene Hanff ketika melawat London, iaitu bukunya sebuah lagi: The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street.

Buku ini membuat saya berfikir tentang banyak perkara mengenai tabiat membaca sendiri. Patutkah saya meneruskan membaca sebarang fiksyen, atau memburu bukan fiksyen yang jauh lebih pentin...moreBuku ini antara yang paling cepat saya habisi tahun ini. Beberapa hari tak berpisah dengannya, malah sempat mencatat nota panjang, hati berasa sangat lapang. Paling seronok, buku ini turut memuatkan diari Helene Hanff ketika melawat London, iaitu bukunya sebuah lagi: The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street.

Buku ini membuat saya berfikir tentang banyak perkara mengenai tabiat membaca sendiri. Patutkah saya meneruskan membaca sebarang fiksyen, atau memburu bukan fiksyen yang jauh lebih penting? Patutkah saya meneruskan niat menghabiskan 50 buku setahun, atau membaca buku yang benar-benar penting sebanyak 50 kali? Manakah akan lebih bermakna?

Buku ini juga seperti berpesan, agar jangan lelah dalam memburu impian:

I tell you, life is extraordinary. A few years ago I couldn't write anything or sell anything, I'd passed the age where you know all the returns are in, I'd had my chance and done my best and failed. And how was I to know the miracle waiting to happen round the corner in late middle age? 84, Charing Cross Road was no best seller, you understand; it didn't make me rich or famous....It brought me to England. I changed my life (p. 150)

Ini mengingatkan saya kepada 'Law of Attraction' - yang menekankan agar jangan pernah ragu, tetapi percaya bulat bahawa selama kita mewujudkan gelombang-gelombang positif ke arah impian, maka tunggu impian itu mendatangi kita dengan penuh kesabaran.

Mulanya saya fikir akan mencari buku-buku yang Helene sebutkan dalam surat-suratnya, tetapi setelah cuba membaca beberapa baris dari karya-karya Quiller-Coach di http://bartleby.com, saya sangsi dengan keupayaan sendiri untuk setabah Helene, menghabiskan The Art of Writing, buku-buku yang disebut dalam The Art of Writing, serta buku-buku yang disebut dalam buku-buku yang disebut dalam The Art of Writing, selama tempoh 11 tahun. Itulah yang disifatkannya pendidikan kolej, sukatan yang dicarinya sendiri menjangkau Transatlantik dan menghasilkan 84, Charing Street yang sangat diminati oleh para peminat buku.

Pendek kata, sebagai pencinta buku, banyak hal dalam buku epistolari Helene Hanff & Frank Doel ini yang boleh kita kaitkan dengan diri. Oleh sebab buku-buku Helene begitu pendek, sampai di penamat saya masih berasa belum cukup lagi.(less)

like 2 likes

· see review

Dec 29, 2009

Lindsey rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, memoir, favs

This perfect book made me cry in the middle of an airport on New Year's Eve. I am not a crier.

like 3 likes

· see review

Aug 21, 2011

DubaiReader rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, audiobook

Review for the unabridged audio version.

These letters are the genuine communications between American book collector and play-write, Helene Hanff, and Frank Doel, the very English salesman of Marks & Co, 84 Charing Cross Road, London. They originated from Miss Hanff's desperation at not being able to find affordable, good quality editions of the antique books she was seeking, in America. She decided to contact a book seller in England, though she always insisted in payment by dollar bi...more

like 1 like

· see review

Feb 15, 2011

Evan rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: _less-than-100-pages, gosh-arent-we-readers-great, britannia, 2011-reads, epistle-larry-approves, _lfpl-library

All right, fuck it, and serve me quiche... And tawlk amongst yuhselves, I'm verklempt.

84, Charing Cross Road is a book about bibliophilia, anglophilia, epistemophilia and whatever the philias are that refer to sharing and caring. Yeah, it's all warm and fuzzy and after reading it my misanthropy is allowed to take a short holiday in Dorset along with my critical acumen.

Helen Hanff was the quintessential sassy assed New York writer dame who in 1949 began a 20-year ser...more

like 2 likes

· see review

Oct 22, 2009

Elizabeth (Miss Eliza) rated it

Recommends it for: Jess

Shelves: bios

A very sweet fast read about the 20 year correspondence between Helene Hanff and Frank Doel, of Marks & Co. If only I had someone to find every book I'm looking for for such cheap prices. Bittersweet in that they never met and makes one realize some things should not be indefinitely postponed. I also felt it was too short, some letters jumped significantly in time, more please! I also gave a little squeak when they mentioned a book I actually own, The Essays of Elia, which though not the exact e...moreA very sweet fast read about the 20 year correspondence between Helene Hanff and Frank Doel, of Marks & Co. If only I had someone to find every book I'm looking for for such cheap prices. Bittersweet in that they never met and makes one realize some things should not be indefinitely postponed. I also felt it was too short, some letters jumped significantly in time, more please! I also gave a little squeak when they mentioned a book I actually own, The Essays of Elia, which though not the exact edition, it is the illustrated edition which was what she was looking for that sits on my shelf! Can't wait to read the followup, which ironically is out of print.

Full Review:
Helene Hanff's 84, Charing Cross Road is a compendium of the twenty year correspondence between the New York writer Helene Hanff and the British bookseller Frank Doel. One day Miss Hanff saw an ad in the Saturday Evening Review for the Marks & Co. Bookshop at 84 Charing Cross Road saying they specialize in antiquarian and out-of-print books and immediately writes them with a list of the rare non-fiction she is looking for which she is unable to find stateside. The shop is able to supply the books to her in wonderful clean and tight copies for next to nothing, and there starts the connection. Through the years she becomes a part of the staffs' lives and they hers, though they never meet.

With this book you walk away with the feeling you wish more bookshops were still like this. That intimate one on one friendship where they knew what you were looking for and were able to find you gorgeous books for a pittance. I also thought of my friends down in Houston who run Murder by the Book, maybe I should start sending then ham and eggs at the holidays to show how much I really appreciate them. Also the love of books that these people had is rarely seen nowadays. They bonded over a shared love of knowledge and history.

While at times Miss Hanff comes across as abrasive, the British view it as her type of wit, and perhaps it is, because she generously sends them holiday gift baskets to help during the hard times inflicted by the continuation of rationing. Or perhaps she just liked being a fairy godmother to those far away, embracing those who were dear to her in the only way she could. See Helene Hanff hated travel and never actually met Frank Doel, and perhaps these gifts were her way of saying sorry for me not being there. But at the end when Frank dies you are conflicted. You are left with on the one hand, you should never leave anything too late because you never know what might happen. But on the other hand, could Helene or Frank really have lived up to the others expectations?

In her last letter contained in the book to her friend Katerine, you feel that perhaps all along you never knew how much that book shop meant to Helene, that behind the false bravado of a New York writer there was just someone longing to connect to someone else and she found it half a world away with people she never truly knew. You also cry out, the book is too short, the sequel is out of print, the time lapses sometimes go for months or years, was this due to letters being lost or just edited out? You just want to live in this long ago and far away world a little more, even if it isn't the stuff of fiction, which is how Helene would like it.(less)

like 1 like

· see review

Dec 05, 2008

Lucy rated it

I was guided to this book by several people after I raved about my love for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Now that I've read it, I can see how the two books are similar, although I did prefer the satisfying fiction in Guernsey.

84 Charing Cross Road is a sweet, short book containing the correspondence between Helene Hanff, a gregarious and irreverent writer living in New York, and the much more formal workers of the antique bookstore, Marks & Co. in Great Britain....more

like 4 likes

· see review

May 18, 2011

Naomi rated it

Shelves: bestrecommended

Almost 90% of my book collection were bought in second hand's book stores. That's why I've felt a strong connection to Helene, as we both take a great pleasure in reading used books. Every used book bring spirits of the previous reader or owner.

I feel the same strong feeling reading the 84, Charing Cross Road. I could hear Helene screamed through the pages, urging Frank Doel to send her a nice edition of Tristram Shandy. And the sorry expression from Frank who was unable to find her...more

like 2 likes

· see review

Feb 18, 2011

Jessica rated it

Shelves: book-club

Read this during a plane ride. One of the best little books I've come across. Skip the movie.

REREAD - 8/15/2008
84, Cross Cross Road, by Helene Hanff, is one of my favorite books of all time. Clocking in at less than 100 pages, it’s a short but delightful read. Seriously. Delightful.

Helene Hanff is a writer in New York. She writes to Marks & Co. in London in 1949, looking for rare and out-of-print books. Frank Doel responds on behalf of Marks & Co., and so begins a...more

like 1 like

· see review

Apr 28, 2011

Brittany rated it

Shelves: history

I found this book after reading (and thoroughly enjoying) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. This is another epistolary story. The difference here is that these are actual letters written by actual real people. Real people are messier than the fictional kind.

The difference is also that it's not a romantic love story, and that the ends do not get tied off as neatly. Depending on what kind of a reader you are, this could be either good or bad. It's good in that it's beaut...more

like 1 like

· see review

Oct 22, 2008

Linda rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: armchair-travel

A gentle read, a perfect read. I KNOW that I've read this book before, decades ago. I found this particular copy through interlibrary loan and as luck would have it I was given the 1970 edition which is absolutely the best. The book languished amidst a pile of 'things to do', I finally looked at the date and realized it was overdue and if I wanted my favorite librarians to continue catering to my increasing demands (goodreads.com has a way of opening up the world) I had better stay in their g...more

like 4 likes

· see review

Jan 14, 2011

Abbey rated it

Shelves: fiction-classic

My life is as small and quiet and bookish as I can make it, and it's still too noisy, so once again, I watch/read "84 Charing Cross Road." This time I used the book like a libretto while watching the movie with Sir Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft. What a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, and so very anachronistic, since the movie is a celebration of the lost art of letter writing and the slow development of deep, human connections.

We try to make too many instant connn...more

like 2 likes

· see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 406 407 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Book vs. Movie	9	37	Dec 16, 2011 06:00pm

combine
Other Editions (30)

More editions...

Genres

Non Fiction

291 users

Writing > Books About Books

92 users

Autobiography > Memoir

90 users

Biography

51 users

Classics

38 users

European Literature > British Literature

36 users

Biography Memoir

25 users

Book Club

20 users

Literature

17 users

Literature > American

14 users

See top shelves...

Readers Also Enjoyed

About Helene Hanff

Helene Hanff (April 15, 1916–April 9, 1997) was an American writer. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she is best known as the author of the book 84 Charing Cross Road, which became the basis for a play, teleplay, and film of the same name.

Career
Her career, which saw her move from writing unproduced plays to helping create some of the earliest television dramas to becoming a ki...more

More about Helene Hanff...

Books by Helene Hanff

84, Charing Cross Road / The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Pin It

Trivia About 84, Charing Cross...

2 trivia questions

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from 84, Charing Cross Road

“I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest. The day Hazlitt came he opened to "I hate to read new books," and I hollered "Comrade!" to whoever owned it before me.” — 41 people liked it

“I have these guilts about never having read Chaucer but I was talked out of learning Early Anglo-Saxon / Middle English by a friend who had to take it for her Ph.D. They told her to write an essay in Early Anglo-Saxon on any-subject-of-her-own-choosing. “Which is all very well,” she said bitterly, “but the only essay subject you can find enough Early Anglo-Saxon words for is ‘How to Slaughter a Thousand Men in a Mead Hall’.” — 13 people liked it

More quotes…

Groups That Shelved 84, Charing Cross...

UK Book Club

1508 members

last activity 14 minutes ago

shelf: read

Comfort Reads

1129 members

last activity 1 hour, 13 min ago

shelf: read

title link	preview: 84, Charing Cross Road
avg rating	preview: 84, Charing Cross Road Goodreads rating: 4.16 (7019 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/368916.84_Charing_Cross_Road?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1287338794m/368916.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/368916.84_Charing_Cross_Road?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff[/url]

84, Charing Cross Road

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Readers Also Enjoyed

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website