Mini-Haul

I spent a lovely day today, visiting a village I moved away from about two years ago. They have an Open Gardens weekend every year, which my Dad helped to set up, and it's great fun - lots of people open their beautiful gardens to the public, there's Maypole Dancing, old motor cars, Arts & Crafts... everything one could want from a village. See www.eckington.info for more, erm, info.

They also have a bookstall. And, along with a trip to a charity shop earlier in the week, this amounts to a Mini-Haul, I think. So I thought I'd share it with you.

I know very little about some of these authors, so if anyone else does...

She - H. Rider Haggard - a book I knew of beforehand, but haven't read it. Have only properly come across 'She' as performed by Elvis Costello. I imagine this isn't particularly similar.

Testament of Experience - Vera Brittain - I have Testament of Youth on my shelves at home, and have been recommended VB over and over again. Must be something in it... Somehow I never quite feel ready to go 'over the edge' with this author - but perhaps if I amass enough of them, my opinions will change.

Up the Junction - Nell Dunn - a Virago novel (or perhaps collection of short stories; can't quite tell). But this claims to have 'caused much controversy' when dramatised by the BBC, so perhaps not my cup of tea. We shall see. Like the bad librarian that I'm not quite yet, I've thrown away the plastic dustjacket. Hate 'em.

Anybody Can Do Anything - Betty MacDonald - do you ever get that a book stalks you? It's there, in every secondhand bookshop; every charity shop; every... well, you get the picture. Winifred Holtby's South Riding is one; Betty MacDonald's The Egg and I is another. Thus far, I feel too oppressed to pick them up - I'm playing hard to get. But I've tentatively let Betty McD in another route.

Georgie Merton - F. Harrington - an old children's book. I can never resist old children's books - somehow they seem to have memories attached them much more overtly than other older books. Doreen Lamb of Dagenham, Essex once owned this. I hope it brought her pleasure. The frontispiece is of children escaping up a tree, from a bull. How could it be a bad book?