What are we reading? 8th June 2022

[Andy]

and Portrait of an Unknown Lady by María Gainza translated from the Argentinian Spanish by Thomas Bunstead.

Its surely the sign of a good writer if she can succeed in entertaining in a subject area that I am extremely ignorant about, the art world, and specifically, the fine art of South America in the 1960s.

The nameless describes how she got a job in the Ciudad Bank, working alongside a woman named Enriqueta, a famed art-evaluator, who soon takes the narrator under her wing. Before long, Enriqueta confides in the narrator the outrageous truth; that Enriqueta has been authenticating forged art. The narrator is subsequently given a crash course in the process, and a fortunate thing also, as Enriqueta dies suddenly. The narrator now moves in the same circles as Enriqueta was, with her associates and protégé.
One of them, Renée, has a great ability for imitating paintings and even the style of the painters, so not forgeries as such, but convincing possibilities. The narrator becomes fascinated by the elusive Renée, and determines to track her down, bringing the mystery element to the novel.

Two things appeal particularly. The writing is wonderful. It has a noir-like style to it which enhances the mystery element, yet there is humour, especially in the insight we get into the world of the art critic. In addition it is all played out to a backdrop of the high-society of 1960s Buenos Aires.

[Andy]

and Resuscitation of a Hanged Man by Denis Johnson.

The novel’s protagonist, 25 year old Leonard English, has arrived to Provincetown after an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Within a short space of time he succeeds in turning his life around; he gets employment as a night owl DJ and with surveillance for a Private Investigator, both for the same boss, and falls in love with a lesbian who he entices out for a date.
English becomes fascinated by his seemingly absurd surveillance activities, and becomes involved in situations he doesn’t fully understand.

Though the novel is to do with mystery and detecting, it is not a crime novel. Rather, it is a shrewd observation of the recovery of a broken man and his efforts to try and find himself. As you might expect with Johnson, it’s done at a brisk pace, with snappy prose and his trademark dark humour.

[MK]

Tam wrote: "The sprog has asked me for recommendations for his trip through Germany in early July. He is going to Frankfurt, Berlin and Hamburg, and other places along the way. He is a historian so something b..."

I hope Sprog will get to Wurzburg. I could have sat on the stairs (I'm sure - NOT ALLOWED!) all day as I looked at - https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/giam...

[MK]

scarletnoir wrote: "Georg wrote: "Another novelist who started as a journalist and was, maybe, the most powerful attitude shifter of them all: Charles Dickens with "Oliver Twist" and "A Christmas Carol".

Your evidenc..."

I hate to be so 'kneejerk' but Claremont did ring bells, so I asked Google about the author and found he also has written for the Washington Examiner. I know, I know, but I do want to know where an author might be coming from.

[Tam]

MK wrote: "Tam wrote: "The sprog has asked me for recommendations for his trip through Germany in early July. He is going to Frankfurt, Berlin and Hamburg, and other places along the way. He is a historian so..."

https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

A wierd piece of happenstance, this was in the Guardian today...

[AB76]

Andy wrote: "and Portrait of an Unknown Lady by María Gainza translated from the Argentinian Spanish by Thomas Bunstead.

Its s..."

thanks for this Andy, as a fan of Argie lit, this sounds fascinating

[Gpfr]

Andy wrote: "The Return of Faraz Ali & Portrait of an Unknown Lady..."

These look good, Andy, thanks.

[Gpfr]

Hot here - 30 today and 38 forecast for Saturday. 🥵

[Gpfr]

At the moment, I'm reading the lovely Lives of Houses as I've said over on WWR and a D.I. Skelgill mystery by Bruce Beckham, Murder in Adland - series recommended by giveusaclue.
and
I read 2 more mysteries by Claude Izner, set in Paris in les années folles. The hero, Jeremy Nelson, is a jazz pianist. . Claude Izner is the pseudonym of 2 sisters who, among other things, were bouquinistes by the Seine. The elder died recently. I enjoyed their previous series about Victor Legris, bookshop owner and amateur detective in late 19th century Paris. I think these are available in English, don't know about the Jeremy Nelson ones.
From the library, I've got Leonardo Padura's La transparence du temps, translated from Spanish (Cuba) by Elena Zayas. That's the next read.

[AB76]

Gpfr wrote: "Hot here - 30 today and 38 forecast for Saturday. 🥵"

27c here today and 30c tommorow but i always like the first warmth of summer, then it gets boring quick!

[Andy]

I can’t recall ever being affected by a news item the way I have been about the Government’s ‘Rwanda Policy’. So many things about it upset me. No doubt worse things have happened, but I have more life experience now, and have acquired more knowledge to base my own views on.. or as a great man once said, I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.

It was in such a state of misery I began David Park’s new novel Spies in Canaan .

For those who don’t know Park, he came to some very moderate fame with his previous novel, Travelling in a Strange Land, which won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year in 2020. Indeed he is Irish. I came aware of it thanks to a Not The Booker Nomination, and very much enjoyed it.

Books have that knack of clarifying the way you see the world, and such is the case with this, which, by some way for me, is the best book of the year so far.


Widower Michael Miller, an elderly diplomat, is living out his life on the East Coast of America having served in Vietnam and retired from the Foreign Office with an excellent, if undistinguished, record. Lost in his thoughts a DVD arrives through the mail from someone he knew forty years before.

Following the introduction the novel then reflects back to Miller’s posting in Saigon as a junior intelligence office in the final days of the Vietnam War.

This story forms the first half of the novel, a perfectly interesting fast-moving tale of Miller and his friends, one of optimism and idealism, still seeking a negotiated settlement. The last days and weeks before the American evacuation are brilliantly and distressingly described. It is convincing and moving writing, allowing the imagination to bring the past alive.

But the DVD compels Miller into a search for some sort of redemption, for which he travels to the desert borderlands of Texas where migrants risk everything to reach the promised land.

Park has produced what in effect is a spy thriller, but in actuality is so much more; a story of innocence lost, and of the regrets and guilt that old age can bring.
With age for Miller comes change. Once a naive idealist with romantic and patriotic notions of honour, his eyes are to a degree opened in Saigon, by those he serves with. He is part of Clinton’s entourage to Northern Ireland in 1995 to negotiate the peace process. As his life proceeds he continues to question the foundations he built his early life on; who decides what is right and wrong, the good and the bad, and more specifically, the question of America’s foreign policy.

In just 200 pages Park manages an examination into the intricacy of the human experience, a moving account of guilt resurfacing in old age.

I think it has an outside chance of making the Booker Longlist, it certainly deserves to make award lists.

Just a note to finish with.. the largest contingent of the 462 refugees who crossed the Channel on Tuesday were Afghans. They will not even have their cases heard in the UK if the Government gets their way. How will we, and more importantly those closely involved, look back at this in years to come..

[giveusaclue]

Gpfr wrote: "At the moment, I'm reading the lovely Lives of Houses as I've said over on WWR and a D.I. Skelgill mystery by Bruce Beckham, Murder in Adland - series recommended by giveusaclue.
[b..."

Glad to hear it G. Keep going with the Skelgill series, they get better.

[AB76]

Andy wrote: "I can’t recall ever being affected by a news item the way I have been about the Government’s ‘Rwanda Policy’. So many things about it upset me. No doubt worse things have happened, but I have more ..."

i'm shocked by the policy, its a cynical way to please the fringe rabble who liked brexit cos it was keeping "them fowen peepul out"
i know a lot about Rwanda and in no sane universe would that country be considered a reputable reception point for tired, stressed and trafficked persons. Its a violent state, run by a man who is quietly becoming Africa's latest blood stained dictator.

Rwanda has good PR strategies, an intelligent workforce and since it joined the commonwealth, a foot in the anglosphere but very little of its internal and external policies would meet any standards ot requirements for settling vulnerable people.

the boats situation is another brexit-influenced political mess, blame the french, blame the traffickers, blame the salty sea, just never ourselves is the tory policy.

it will not prevent desperate people facing oblivion making the journey but it will create more misery for those who make it to Kent and then end up in another over-populated small country but this time where they would never want to live or find sanctuary

[AB76]

Bizarrely, i'm having my best "modern" novel year i can remember, already matched last years total and just ordered the recent Galgut novel and Banvilles "The Sea", i feel more confident in what modern lit may bring me (probably cursed it now)

Banvilles The Book of Evidence was one of my oddest reads about 4 years ago, it was so good in places and then so fustrating that i never knew when i sat down to read, what i would get

[Tam]

Andy wrote: "I can’t recall ever being affected by a news item the way I have been about the Government’s ‘Rwanda Policy’. So many things about it upset me. No doubt worse things have happened, but I have more ..."

Thanks Andy this book looks interesting to me, I prefer my 'historical' fictional stories to be in the land of the plausible on the whole, and especially where questions of moral culpability are concerned. Will put it up quite high on my TBR pile...

[Andy]

AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "I can’t recall ever being affected by a news item the way I have been about the Government’s ‘Rwanda Policy’. So many things about it upset me. No doubt worse things have happened, but..."

Good to know, though not surprising, that others feel the same.

[Lljones]

Andy wrote: "I can’t recall ever being affected by a news item the way I have been about the Government’s ‘Rwanda Policy’. So many things about it upset me. No doubt worse things have happened..."

I'm afraid I'm so wrapped up in the "clear and present danger" still present here in the US that I missed this story. I'll brace myself to follow up when I can.

[AB76]

I have been pleasently suprised to discover two classic novels set on the Spanish holiday island of Majorca, both covering the violent and tragic Nationalist occupation of 1936, from a decade or so removed.

I havent started The Island by Anna Maria Mutate yet, its a spanish language novel of a summer on the island during these turbulent years and is on my list to read this week or next

Last summer i read The Sea by Blai Bonet, a catalan novel which covers many different aspects of 1936 on the island. Using a dark, unsettling tone, which would be more suited to northern european fiction, Bonet lets the horror sink in slowly, though his horror concerns the fate of TB sufferers in a sanitorium, abuse and the spectre of death but by off hand references to savage violence acted out on the defeated island Republicans (anti-fascists), the war adds another layer of death and gloom

Major battles were fought for the island in 1936, the Italians helped the Francoist forces to take the island and then started to hunt down and kill every marxist they could find, the italian commander Bonnacorsi was a flamboyant figure and a brutal persecutor of the left wing.

[scarletnoir]

Georg wrote: "I said "maybe", so opinion, which cannot be backed up by evidence.

Was Dickens an out-and-out leftie, or a small 'c' conservative?

Black or white? I'd say he was 49 shades of grey."

Thanks - a lot of life is like that, isn't it? Though some of our political leaders ATM are such a dark shade of grey it's hard to tell that they aren't (morally) totally black.

(Are you familiar with the French phrase La nuit, tous les chats sont gris.? I rather like it... as well as entre chien et loup for dusk or twilight, when it's hard to see the difference...)

[scarletnoir]

Tam wrote: "I have to give a shout out for Edgar Reitz's 'Heimat', particularly the early series."

That was brilliant - we saw it in Paris, shown in the cinema as four 4h long chunks (with intermissions). You should have seen my heavily pregnant wife's face when I told her we had season tickets (I initially referred to it as a 16h film).

As for books set in Germany - can't think of many that I've read, but there is an excellent series on the nastier Nazis by Philip Kerr, whose definitely 'grey' protagonist Bernie Gunther is an honest-ish Berlin cop and definitely not a Nazi, though he has to compose with the system. Many books in the series are set wholly or partly in Berlin, and despite the grim background Kerr manages to introduce many light touches through Gunther's trickery in keeping a step ahead of the bad guys - usually. This is a link to the series:

https://www.howtoread.me/bernie-gunth...

More recently, I have been reading David Downing's John Russell series, also set in Berlin, at least initially. I have only read one or two - they're pretty good, though lack the humour you find in Kerr. These also cover the Nazi period:

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/d/da...

(I am trying to avoid Nazis ATM, but it's difficult!)

[scarletnoir]

Andy wrote: "(It) is necessary to understand the background of the characters and the times they were living in - ie.. not a short answer."

Fair comment - though I was surprised (let's say) that they packed so much champagne but insufficient clothing!

Thanks for the review of 'The return of Faraz Ali', BTW - it sounds very much like my sort of thing and is added to the virtual TBR pile... though I sometimes wonder if that will prove like that new law whereby the smoking age increases by a year every year, so anyone who is 14 now will never be old enough to smoke! (I don't know if the pile will ever get smaller: it seems unlikely.)

[Bill]

Still a few hours left in my time zone (I believe it is about Oxen of the Sun hour) to note that today is Bloomsday in the centenary year of Ulysses.

I'm about halfway through the previous NYRB and the new one arrived earlier this week with an article about a new Alban Berg biography. Do I stick to my chronological reading discipline or jump ahead? (This is my version of the marshmallow test.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanfor...

[Robert]

From The Private Diaries of Sir H. Rider Haggard, 1914-1925

Entry for 15 October, 1917:
This morning I heard that Reggie was leaving Charing Cross by the seven o' clock train, so I went to try and find him....
Charing Cross is a curious and melancholy spectacle when such a train is departing. Dozens of officers, from Generals down, with their kit, and a certain number of men of inferior rank of both Services. Also their womankind come to say them goodbye. They are wonderfully brave, these women-- mothers, wives, sweethearts, daughters! A quiver of the lip, a breaking of the voice-- that is all! though occasionally as I walked up and down seeking for Reggie, I saw a pair in each other's arms in a compartment of the train.
How many farewells have this station and Waterloo witnessed during the last three years-- farewells, hundreds of them, for the last time on earth! The thing is terrible; if there is haunted ground anywhere it should be at this prosaic railway station.

[scarletnoir]

Andy wrote: "and Portrait of an Unknown Lady by María Gainza translated from the Argentinian Spanish by Thomas Bunstead. "

This also sounds potentially very interesting - I love to visit galleries (or did before COVID), and the last trip to London before lockdown was in part to see Hockney at the National Portrait Gallery and Picasso at the RA. This week, we got to see our first masterpiece since that trip - improbably, in Newtown - where the National Gallery's touring Rembrandt was on display:

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddes...

Art forgery is also a special interest - I read a biography of the Dutch forger Han van Meegeren many years ago... he created many false masterpieces, sold them for $30 million at 1967 prices - who knows how much at today's valuations - and had to paint a 'masterpiece' under supervision to avoid a post-war charge of collaboration:

He decided to prove his talent by forging paintings by 17th-century artists including Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch and Johannes Vermeer. The best art critics and experts of the time accepted the paintings as genuine and sometimes exquisite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_van...

Forgery is also the subject of one of the greatest Morse episodes - Who killed Harry Field?, where the incorrigible forger is portrayed by the wonderful Freddie Jones.

In addition, a very good friend has written a wide-ranging and interesting academic work on the topic, which considers not only forgery but also the problems of restoration:


(Whether, and how, to restore an artwork is a subject of debate... the Rembrandt we saw, Saskia van Uylenburgh in Arcadian Costume, was unrestored and had its original cracked varnish.)

[scarletnoir]

Andy wrote: "David Park’s new novel Spies in Canaan . Spies in Canaan by David Park... With age for Miller comes change. Once a naive idealist with romantic and patriotic notions of honour, his eyes are to a degree opened in Saigon, by those he serves with... "

Sounds promising, and a sort of companion piece to Graham Greene's brilliant

As for the Rwanda policy: Marina Hyde filleted this policy brilliantly in Wednesday's Guardian, making the point that the government was not interested in really sending people to Rwanda, but needed to create enemies such as 'leftie lawyers' in order to stir up resentment in their more rabid supporters and increase their electoral chances - an act of total cynicism:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...

[scarletnoir]

AB76 wrote: "Last summer i read The Sea by Blai Bonet, a catalan novel which covers many different aspects of 1936 on (Majorca)."

Your description rang a bell, and I checked - there is a film of the book, though I have no idea how faithful it is to the original. A review suggests the adaptation is somewhat OTT!

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0220631/...

[Lljones]

Bill wrote: "Still a few hours left in my time zone (I believe it is about Oxen of the Sun hour) to note that today is Bloomsday in the centenary year of Ulysses."

My NYRB's are still delivered to my previous address, so I'm way behind,.

[[deleted user]]

All Men Glad and Wise< – Laura C Stevenson (2022)

A good murder mystery set on an English country estate in 1919, everyone and every thing overhung by the War. It would particularly appeal to anyone with an interest in horses, as the narrator is a young groom on the estate, and much detail is given on the proper care, stabling and exercising of horses, and the relation of horse and rider. An identity issue is central to the plot. It troubled me at first but I got used to it. There is a fine cross-section of suspects, and some affecting moments. The author is a Vermonter (not someone I know). She nicely conveys the Englishness of it all, with only a very few American expressions slipping in. Recommended.

[scarletnoir]

For those with an interest in the scatological, here is a short article (referenced in the current Private Eye):

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journa...

It made me LOL, anyway!

[AB76]

Robert wrote: "From The Private Diaries of Sir H. Rider Haggard, 1914-1925

Entry for 15 October, 1917:
This morning I heard that Reggie was leaving Charing Cross by the seven o' clock train, so I went to try a..."

reminds me of Sartre describing the Paris stations in 1940,during the phoney war as the call up led to a few million young frenchman sent to the frontiers as France prepared for war

is this a library book Robert or a nice new paperback version?

[AB76]

scarletnoir wrote: "Tam wrote: "I have to give a shout out for Edgar Reitz's 'Heimat', particularly the early series."

That was brilliant - we saw it in Paris, shown in the cinema as four 4h long chunks (with intermi..."

i love Heimat, have the entire set on DVD

[SydneyH]

AB76 wrote: "Bizarrely, i'm having my best "modern" novel year i can remember, already matched last years total and just ordered the recent Galgut novel and Banvilles "The Sea", i feel more confident in what mo..."

I love the Sea, but it divides people. Have you tried A General Theory of Oblivion? An Angolan novel, might be your thing. I also thought Narrow Road to the Deep North might be more your thing than it was mine - about Australians on the Burma Railway in the second world war.

[AB76]

SydneyH wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Bizarrely, i'm having my best "modern" novel year i can remember, already matched last years total and just ordered the recent Galgut novel and Banvilles "The Sea", i feel more confide..."

i will make a note of these Syd, thanks, i havent read them

[AB76]

The mercury is rising in The Shires, my abode is thankfully shaded until 3pm ish but when its a 30c day, resistance can be futile!

I finished Paul Bowles Collected Stories but was underwhelmed, they lacked the slow building atmosphere of his brilliant north african novels of the 1949-1955 period. However i do love the European-Arab overlap of Tangiers in that period and while the overall effect was dissappointing, i enjoyed the world depicted.

Next up is The Island by Ana Maria Mutate(1959), a new translation from the spanish(2020). Set on the Spanish island of Majorca during the civil war

[Gpfr]

Just received a parcel from Slightly Foxed with 2 of their lovely books:
Eric Newby - Love and War in the Apennines. I enjoyed A Small Place in Italy telling how he and his wife bought a tumbledown house in the Apennines where they first met. Now to read about that first meeting.
Jessica Mitford - Hons and Rebels. I'm looking forward to reading it again - after many years.

[Lass]

Re Dickens. A Leftie? Not sure, but he certainly had a social conscience. Peter Ackroyd’s hefty biog would prob give some indication, but not sure if I’m up to 1200 pages anymore. Found it absorbing at the time. Claire Tomalin’s The Invisible Woman, about his affair with Ellen Ternan is excellent, and might provide some clues. Either way it makes an enjoyable, informative read.

[AB76]

Gpfr wrote: "Just received a parcel from Slightly Foxed with 2 of their lovely books:
Eric Newby - Love and War in the Apennines. I enjoyed A Small Place in Italy telling how he and his wife bought a tumbledown..."

I loved "Love and War in the Apennines", both my mother and uncle were Newby fans and my mother was the first to mention him to me

[FrancesBurgundy]

AB76 wrote: " my mother and uncle were Newby fans.."

I recently read his The Last Grain Race, a voyage on a sailing ship to Australia when he was still a teenager. Great read.

[AB76]

FrancesBurgundy wrote: "AB76 wrote: " my mother and uncle were Newby fans.."

I recently read his The Last Grain Race, a voyage on a sailing ship to Australia when he was still a teenager. Great read."

thats both my mother and uncles favourite book by Newby

[AB76]

Bookshop topic

Having started to use Blackwells a lot and Waterstones now in an attempt to de-Amazon myself (about 30% of TBR books i have read are non-amazon so far in 2022 but 75% of all new books ordered in 2022) i am intrigued by the bookshop set up as it stands in 2022 in the UK. With Waterstones now the dominant bookshop

what was your first bookshop and can you remember the name?
Mine was Hammicks in 1984-5 in the nearest market town to where i grew up in the shires, its now a Waterstones (via being an ottokars) and i once spent a teenage sunday stock taking, which i loathed!

[scarletnoir]

AB76 wrote: "Bookshop topic

what was your first bookshop and can you remember the name?

Since you ask: the (independent) bookshop where I spent my childhood birthday money and much else besides was Galloway's, in Aberystwyth... a family business, which unfortunately closed around 2009. The shop was originally in the building slightly higher up the hill, and was wonderfully labyrinthine; I didn't much care for the modern version architecturally.

http://www.thebookshoparoundthecorner...

Nowadays, we have a Waterstones and a few small bookshops, though the Welsh medium specialist shop closed very recently - the website is still up, though!

https://siopypethe.cymru/

[Tam]

scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Bookshop topic

what was your first bookshop and can you remember the name?

Since you ask: the (independent) bookshop where I spent my childhood birthday money and much else besides w..."

Hi Scarlett

I sent the update on Dave's treatment again to you yesterday, (Thursday) but it does not seem to have got to you, can you check? Alas I didn't copy it, so I will have to do it again, but wanted to check the delivery first.

Its as if it was posted into some sort of abyss or time-warp. Somehow I can see a giant cockroach in my minds eye, in a parallel world, reading his Robitussin robocoms monitor and heartily complaining about the lack of excessive x's, c, and z's in the text and swearing that he will have to czech up on its veracity!...

[AB76]

scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Bookshop topic

what was your first bookshop and can you remember the name?

Since you ask: the (independent) bookshop where I spent my childhood birthday money and much else besides w..."

havent heard of that shop, i wonder if anyones first bookshop still remains as it was?

[MK]

My first bookshop was the library. I remember riding my bike from 73 Chapel St (now a parking lot) about 3 blocks to Lithgow Public Library with my bike basket containing my returns and of course picking up more to replace them. I still rely on the library for books and have two systems to choose from.

Of course that doesn't mean I'm not buying books as well, but I never had a particular bookshop like some here.

And I am in the process of reshelving some non-fiction subjects (so far - religion and food in history) into the book case in the closet. When that is complete, I can shift Biographies (3 starring Raffles alone) to make room for the History books that are overflowing their book case.

Only then will I tackle mysteries and all their stacks. I have an empty book case sitting on the back porch which is my LAST book case as I have run out of space. I hope to have this exercise completed by summer's end. (But then I am always an optimist.)

[AB76]

MK wrote: "My first bookshop was the library. I remember riding my bike from 73 Chapel St (now a parking lot) about 3 blocks to Lithgow Public Library with my bike basket containing my returns and of course p..."

amazing how an empty book case can be filled so fast!

[giveusaclue]

Sisson and Parker in Nottingham. Going every Christmas to get the latest Enid Blyton books. Was taken over by Waterstones and is now Sainsbury's local!

And the library of course.

[AB76]

giveusaclue wrote: "Sisson and Parker in Nottingham. Going every Christmas to get the latest Enid Blyton books. Was taken over by Waterstones and is now Sainsbury's local!

And the library of course."

i feel bad i have never been a library person, i remember school librarys but dont remember ever using my local public library as a kid, though i must have done sometimes.

[FrancesBurgundy]

AB76 wrote: "Bookshop topic

what was your first bookshop and can you remember the name?"

The Central Educational (Central Ed) in St Peter's Churchyard, Derby, which surprisingly was a road, not a churchyard. But we only went there to exchange school prize book tokens. So you can gather I got a prize or two. And now I have this dreadful confession - I got the first or second form prize, chose 'Kim' by Rudyard Kipling (because I was a keen Girl Guide) and it's still on my TBR shelf! Never read it!

Otherwise it was the library of course.

[AB76]

FrancesBurgundy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Bookshop topic

what was your first bookshop and can you remember the name?"

The Central Educational (Central Ed) in St Peter's Churchyard, Derby, which surprisingly was a road, not a..."

i like the idea of a central educational!

my library memories, around 12-13 are at school, an old and musty smelling library (which i always like, cool and dusty), we used to have a double library period for an hour. i remember George Best biog, some spy novels and 15 volumes series on WW2, with lots of large photos...i can smell it now

[Lass]

My first bookshop? Um, can’t really remember, though a local Brown’s seems to ring a bell. On further research it seems it still survives in the East Riding. Yaaay! I recall,with huge pleasure, my local Carnegie Library. At the time I revelled, not only in the wealth of books to explore, but also the beautiful architecture. Had never heard of Arts and Crafts in the 50s, but oh, I do now!