Bookbarn Spoils

There is a place of wonderment in Somerset, it is called The Bookbarn. We stumbled across it by accident about four years ago, just saw a sign saying 'Used Books This Way' and, naturally, went that way... wow. The biggest secondhand bookshop in England, a barn filled with literally millions of books. Literally millions. www.bookbarn.co.uk.

They've since gone a little techy (see the website) and large amounts of them are now on a database, and only accessible physically to staff - but there are still hundreds of thousands which you can browse. And that's what we did today. I always feel a little panicky when I leave the Bookbarn, because there is never enough time to look at all the books, obviously. What gems could I be walking away from? I tend to take some letters of the alphabet, and look at those shelves (fiction is loosely alphabetical, but not within the letter, e.g. all the authors beginning with 'A' are together, but not organised within 'A'). Today I looked through C, P and B. Dad covered the plays, with my reading list for British Drama Post-1945, and I tried to gather up some Literature and Empire books... and got distracted, of course.


Well, here they are. Astute readers will spot quite a lot of overlap with yesterday's list.

Under Western Eyes - Joseph Conrad; not on the list, but should be handy

Youth and other stories - Joseph Conrad; 'other stories' happens to include a little tale called Heart of Darkness

In The South Seas - R.L. Stevenson; any Stevenson fans able to tell me whether this corresponds to the Stevenson South Sea books on the list from yesterday's post? We assumed it did.

Screens Against the Sky - Elleke Boehmer; not on the list, but Elleke Boehmer is the tutor for the course, so might prove interesting

Untouchable - Mulk Raj Anand; another one on the list...

The House of Dolls - Barbara Comyns; this is where I *might* just have wandered from the reading list... having loved some Comyns last year, and very much liked some others, I felt I needed to stock up

Sisters by a River - Barbara Comyns; did someone mentioned Barbara Comyns?

Bloomsbury Pie - Regina Marler; now we're back on Masters territory - this was recommended when I asked for a good guide to the Bloomsbury Group, and looks fascinating

Kim - Rudyard Kipling; only read a couple of short stories by Kipling, and Kim has always been at the back of my mind...

Our Country's Good - Timberlake Werternbaker
Arcadia - Tom Stoppard
A Taste of Honey - Delaney
All building towards my British Drama Post-1945 module, which I'll share more about in due course. Won't be until January that I actually start it.

The Familiar Faces - David Garnett, non-fiction work by the author of Lady Into Fox (see 50 Books... on the left) this will, again, hopefully provide more Bloomsbury background.

All in all, a good day's searching - and we got to see The Carbon Copy!