August has been slightly book-heavy for me, as an obvious consequence of working in a 2nd hand bookshop (Waterfields on Oxford High Street, for those of you who know it). So, in addition to the piles and piles of trash novels that I have read, I also have the following lurking in a reproachful pile next to my bed:
- Robert Blake's Biography of Disraeli (which I've started, and is jolly good);
- Karl Popper's intellectual autobiography, "Unended Quest" (double ditto);
- Hayek, Road to Serfdom, which I bought new, feeling it was some kind of gap in my political knowledge. Anyway, 150 pages in, it is excellent, although sometimes prone to attacking paper tigers.
I've still not got any further with Trollope, which I think may be permanently shelved. There's also a large pile of (popular) history books which I will try to fit around Powelling - top of the list being various tomes on the English Civil War and its aftermath..
Does anyone else use www.librarything.com by the way? My trash novels are all on there (username "hackloon"), as is a good number of my academic books, but there are some massive gaps which I haven't got round to cataloguing, and can't do until I am back home for a while.
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Glad to hear that Waterfield's is thriving - was always a happy hunting ground for me. The decline in recent times in the number of independent secondhand bookshops in Oxford does concern me slightly. Unsworths, Reservoir books, the market bookshop, the secondhand bookshop on the Broad and now (tragically) Jerico books have all closed since I first went up (in spite of my best efforts to keep them afloat), and Blackwell's and Oxfam becoming increasingly overpriced. It's good to hear there's still one quality outlet left. Cambridge, on the other hand, appears to be better served - with a clutch of decent independents, including the excellent David's, and the new Heffer's secondhand section and the Amnesty bookshop being very favourably priced. You must all come to visit!
Librarything does look rather good - I envisage many hours spent cataloguing my collection. Probably a good thing.
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