You know when I said no more book-buying till Christmas, except while I'm on holiday? Well, I'm now back from said holiday with a pretty little haul and definitely satiated until the New Year. Suffolk, I salute you: you are quite definitely a county of excellent independent bookshops. It seemed as though every historic market town had at least two shops. One selling very expensive kitchenware; and one selling glorious books. What more could a discerning holiday browser want?
The National Trust were to blame for my first purchases on day one. We went to visit Sutton Hoo Anglo-Saxon burial mounds - windy, and less atmospheric than I had hoped - and found a fantastically cheap second-hand bookshop there too, all proceeds to the Trust. Practically a public duty to buy something don't you think? Or four somethings. First, a rather battered Virago, The Shutter of Snow by Emily Holmes Coleman. The familiar green spine caught my eye first, and then the synopsis (post-natal depression leads to incarceration ala The Yellow Wallpaper) confirmed the purchase. After that an as-new Penguin Modern Classics edition of Primo Levi's short non-fictional stories Moments of Reprieve, recounting meetings with individuals in Auschwitz. A companion to If This Is A Man apparently (which I will, of course, read eventually). Then, just as we were turning tail to leave, I spotted a complete set of pristine Brontes, unread Oxford World Classics. I'm at a loss to think how they found themselves there. An unwanted gift? An overenthusiastic university student? Who knows. I took the opportunity to complete my own collection with Charlotte's posthumously published The Professor, and Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Total cost of all four? £4.
The next day we sauntered through two of Suffolk's loveliest towns: Lavenham, an extraordinarily well-preserved 15th century wool-town (300 listed buildings!) and Long Melford with it's straight Georgian arrow of a high street. The latter is home of Landers Bookshop, a lovely two-roomer. In the first room: adult fiction and non-fiction, with a very good selection of new and classic titles; and in the second room: oodles of space for children's and young adult books. I oohed over a couple of new titles (including Craig Brown's One to One, the book about meetings between the famous and infamous) but then settled upon a book that I've picked up a dozen times at home in York. Ironic that I should buy it in Suffolk as it is about a Yorkshire family, the Fitzwilliams, and their mining empire. Black Diamonds: The Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty by Caroline Bailey has been recommended to me by friends and, since I've often walked the family dog over the reclaimed and wooded slag heaps of the Fitzwilliams' collieries, seemed like a must read.
Then to Bury St. Edmunds where the Oxfam Bookshop offered up unexpected booty: Persephone classic No.18 with bookmark intact. Every Eye by Isobel English is a slim one and sounds every page a Persephone. First published in 1956, it follows its heroine on a train journey to Ibiza as she reflects over the course of her life. Muriel Spark liked it very much when it first appeared; and I'm sure I will too. By the till I spotted another treasure. A perfect reprint of Patrick Leigh Fermor's classic travel narrative, The Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople. I was so happy because I've been keen to read this for ages (and am even keener now that I've read the prologue in the car on the way home). It looked like the copy had never been read before, and the evidence on the inside cover seems to support that. There is a gift inscription, dated 15th October 2011 (less than two weeks ago). Which makes me sad: what led someone to give it away so soon after it had been given to them? Had they read it before? Or did they read it quickly and ever so carefully but then decide not to keep it?
Finally, another four book spree at the Dedham Bookshop (which is actually in Essex, just over the Suffolk border). I absolutely loved this bookshop. Loved, loved, loved. It was everything that a small bookshop should be - plenty of stock, and new stock at that, but displayed lovingly with space for each book to breath. The fiction section was tiny, but each and every book in it I either had read, had already bought or wanted to read. Plus a display wall of beautiful, muted Persephone Classics. The most Persephones I have ever seen in one place outside of the Persephone Bookshop 
itself. Red flag. Bull. Three found their way into my hot little hands. A Woman's Place: 1910-1975 by Ruth Adam (No. 20), The World That Was Ours by Hilda Bernstein (No.50) and The Sack of Bath by Adam Fergusson (No. 93). The second one sounds absolutely *amazing*, being the memoir of a communist who lived in Apartheid South Africa. Bernstein was a near contemporary of Doris Lessing and I think her book will make an interesting comparison with the first volume of Lessing's autobiography. As I was waiting my turn to pay (because this bookshop was small but busy; when we first walked in there were two families inside, one with a child clutching a copy of a Julia Donaldson book and wailing 'I need it, I need it!') I impulse-snatched my first Georgette Heyer novel from a side table. A clever bit of positioning methinks. Get them to the cash-desk with their sleek dove-greys and then hit them with the Georgian romance! In this case, Arabella which promises an enchanting debutante and a benevolent godmother and (and!) an eligible rich chap. Can't wait.
What should I read first?
~~Victoria~~