Friday, 2 December 2022
I got a welcome call from Karla at Time Enough Books that the book I ordered had arrived, so we went there (two blocks away) after our midmorning breakfast.
Karla wisely requests that customers wear masks. As usual, a group came in who ignored the signs.
A half block away, the gear shed crew has moved many crab pots that used to be my blue wall out to the field to our south.
We watered Wendi’s planter.
While I started reading, Allan went back to the Bogsy Wood at my request to see if the new deep ditch still held water. Yes, if shallow in spots. The wind was too gusty to even dream of working on it. And I cannot refine it until the water drains.
While assessing the length of Alicia’s lawn….
…he saw hard work going on in the parking lot for crabbing season.
I took a break from reading so we could go over and redo Jodie’s porch rail boxes with some winter twigs and Iris foetidissima cuttings and some Euonymus starts in pots tucked in for winter.
I then read, with great pleasure, all afternoon and into the evening, and finished my book the next day.
Saturday, 3 December 2022
The author is very….descriptive…about the physical appearance of his customers but is equally hard on himself. I would be afraid to read how he would describe me or something foolish I might say if I shopped there, which I would very much like to do, or even live there, if it were not for the distance to Scotland, and my preference for being home, and my age and disability, and our four cats, and my garden, and my grandma’s teacups, and my books, and lack of enough money, and….and…but I wish.
This passage moved me greatly as I am wont to get verklempt about the fate of my grandma’s teacups when I die.
Now I am so sad that the book is done. A year is a long wait for another. I do hope there will be one.
As usual, I have a whole new list of books gleaned from his diaries.
The Bookshop Book Jen Campbell
And the Land Lay Still James Robertson
Bits from an old bookshop RM Williamson
Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows John Koenig
A Touch of Mistletoe Barbara Comyns
Bookshop Memories George Orwell
Tripe Advisor Shaun Bythell
The Intimate Thoughts of John Baxter, Bookseller
Riceyman Steps Arnold Bennett (1923)
A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept Elizabeth Smart
J.P. Donleavy (read The Ginger Man years ago, would I still love it?)
John Evelyn’s Diary
Everything is Illuminated Jonathan Safran Foer
The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Tangly Cottage Gardening 
Thanks for sharing snippets of this book! I love Bythell and am looking forward to reading it.
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Yes, thanks for sharing these pages. What a delightful book, which I now have on my reading list. I wish our library would stock things like this!
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We are very fortunate to have the Timberland Regional Library with its interlibrary loans. I couldn’t wait for this one, though; they don’t do ILL for books less than a year old. You should start with the first book in the series of diaries AND read the book by his friend Jessica Fox!
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Once again I am in envy of your fabulous ILL system. We have something similar but it only accesses other participating libraries in the province, and shelves are mean and lean of what I want to read. I have read Shadow of the Wind (great read) but of your list I suspect I will be lucky to find one on ILL.
My children are minimalists, and I have no illusions of the destination of most of my treasured photos, books, pictures vases and china. Great grandma’s plate, grandma’s crochet throw, aunt’s embroidery, mum’s dish set, dad’s carvings…..
Aughh…best not to think of it.
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I’ll be sure to order Shadow of the Wind.
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I will be interested to see if the Ginger Man still appeals. I read it many years ago too.
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