i am going to bed. i will have hideous nightmares involving huge monsters in academic robes carrying long bloody butcher knives labelled Excerpt, Selection, Passage and Abridged.
The above excerpt is from Helene Hanff’s collection of correspondence, 84 Charing Cross Road, between her and Frank Doel, a bookseller in London in the 1950s. Please stop whatever you are doing and find this book. It’s hilarious.
R
84, Charing Cross Road has been a ‘generational’ book among the women of my family for nearly twenty years. My aunt bought it, then loaned it to each of her sisters, then myself and my sister, my niece etc. It still gets read on a regular basis on loan now from ‘Mom’s library’.
It’s been read so often over the years it’s practically falling apart.
Any time I need a book with heart and humour or if the ‘day-to-day’ is running too fast and I need some balance this is when the call goes out over the family telegraph ..’Hey, Mom do you still have ‘that’ Hanff book?’
To those who haven’t read it yet..go now, find it, and may you have as much joy with it as we’ve had.
Cheers,
Barb
(note-my mom is 87 and she raised a voracious reader. Also, if you want a challenge you can find Q’s lectures On the Art of Writing at http://www.bartleby.com/190/)