Thursday, February 14, 2002

Well I received a nice parcel from Amazon today, containing two books. The first is "Uncle Stories" by J.P. Martin, a paperback omnibus edition containing the first two of the Uncle books which captivated me when I was about 10. Marvellous illustrations by Quentin Blake. I urge all the childish among my readers (that's all of you) to splash out £4.99 for this book - you won't regret it, and you'll encourage Random House to reprint the remaining 4 stories.

The second one is the Everyman's Library edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson. A satisfyingly heavy volume. I have a confession to make - I'm terribly jealous of Nick's collection of books, lots of hardbacks and Folio editions, accumulated over the years. I have lots of books myself - in fact I have been throwing quite a few out and I still need to get a new bookcase (I'm collecting it on Saturday) - but most of them are paperbacks and a bit tatty-looking. I want to go up-market! So I plan to buy one or two Everymans every month to develop a bit of class on my bookshelves.....

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