Vivat Libertas

There are two things I like about second-hand books: the price and the atmosphere. Living in London, where a decent science paperback can set me back anywhere between £8.99 and £10.99 and hardbacks break the £20 barrier, being able to get books cheaply is important to me and my insatiable desire for more stuff to read. ...Maybe the problem is that I've got too many books. That's probably it. The atmosphere, however, is what makes me love coming in bookshops - any sort of bookshop. In a normal bookshop, the kind where all the books are fresh and bright and new, I love just getting lost looking at the new releases or the promoted books, or going further back into the winding bookshelves to search for their classics and foreign literature sections. I love picking up books and looking at the blurb, or catching a whiff of some of that new book smell as I quickly flip through them to see whether I like the writing style. I love sitting on the floor to arrange the books I wa...

So this  is the best I can come up with after an absence of over a month?! Not quite - there is better still to come - but for now I am blogging in my spare time, in between studying, exams and trying to make sure that I actually get to university come September. So pardon me if my posts aren't always deep and thought-provoking; it's not like they ever are, anyway. Those of you who know me will know that I absolutely adore books. Right now I have hundreds huddled against each other on my shelves and curled up on my floor for lack of space. If I'm engrossed in a book or a magazine, you're probably not going to get a peep out of me till I'm done - if I even acknowledge your existence. (I'm really rude to people when I'm reading, because I blank out everything that isn't a rectangle with writing on it. Sorry!) I love their shape, their feel, their smell, their covers. And when ebook readers first took off a couple of years ago, I wasn't too impresse...

Not so long ago I went to Cecil Court  with my mother and grandmother for a half-day trip (feeling a bit miserable and sick for various reasons, not least the stupidity and superficiality I see around me - I'm an oversensitive and profoundly whiny soul), having been told that it was a street full of books. Since I devour just about anything in print, I was rather looking forward to going there. Although I had some niggling reservations after looking it up - it seemed to be a street for people who collected books rather than people who read them, like me - and although as the day wore on I became less and less partial to staying in London, I went anyway and set off with a spring in my step, my relatives trailing behind me, to see books. As things turned out, I was sorely disappointed. The shops were small and of no benefit to anyone save perhaps rich collectors; apart from maybe two or three shops, their collections of books weren't very good - there was little for someone...