Like me, Sandra was a ferocious reader, one of the few people I’ve known who actually read more and faster than me. Where we differed was in our attitude towards books, as she was far more ruthless in discarding books than I could ever be. For example, before we moved in together she had gotten rid (unasked) of at least a third of her books, while I, well, had not. She always kept trying to limit the spread of books and bookcases through the house somewhat, even though she was aware it was largely a lost battle. Not that she disapproved of buying more books, just that we should be discerning in which books we’d actually keep.
So she might’ve been just a tiny bit disappointed if she’d seen the pile of books I’ve brought home from Plymouth. Not much, just a bit and only because she’d known our bookcases are full to overflowing already and more books won’t help there. But I can’t help it, there was just too much good stuff. What I’ve always liked about going to Plymouth was browsing the charity shops up in Mannamead, near where Sandra lived, as back then you could be certain to pick up a lot of good books for cheap. These days many of the bigger charity chains have long since discovered that it’s easier to put the good stuff up on Ebay, so there’s less gold amongst the dross, but roughly half that pile still came from charity shops anyway.
The rest all comes from one great bookshop right in the middle of the Barbican/harbour, the tourist area of Plymouth, three floors of bookshelves heaving with secondhand gems. Not all that cheap, but I know that if I lived in Plymouth full time I would’ve spent quite a lot of my disposable income there — I found a lot of books there already on my own shelves, which is always a sign of a good shop. If you’re ever in Plymouth and in need of something good to read, the Book Cupboard is your best bet.
What I found there: a pile of Giles annuals, several Nicholas Freeling van der Valk mysteries, several hard to find sf novels (Vance’s Showboat World, Ian Watson’s The Book of the River, Diane Duane’s The Door into Shadow) as well as two history books, of which The Saxon Shore: a Handbook is the most interesting, something I had to buy as I wasn’t sure I’d ever see it again. In general I would’ve liked to spent a day or so browsing the history shelves, but we had other things to do…
