Louisa's review
84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
this 97-page book is a completely wonderful series of 20 years of (short and often funny) letters between the writer and the owner of a little London rare books bookstore. I don't want to write cheesy things about a friendship blossoming by mail between a brash and exuberant new york writer and a stuffy and sweet old londoner, but you are practically forced to write such things about this book, which at any rate transcends cliche. a must read.
Here is how it begins:
Oct. 5, 1949
Gentlemen:
Your ad in the Sunday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books. The phrase 'antiquarian booksellers' scares me somewhat as I equate 'antique' with expensive. I am a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books & 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.
I enclose a list of my most pressing problems. If you have clean secondhand copies of any of...more
Here is how it begins:
Oct. 5, 1949
Gentlemen:
Your ad in the Sunday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books. The phrase 'antiquarian booksellers' scares me somewhat as I equate 'antique' with expensive. I am a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books & 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.
I enclose a list of my most pressing problems. If you have clean secondhand copies of any of...more
