Books

Getting off the train from London at our local station, I had a short stroll to the stop to catch the bus which would deposit me within ten yards of my house. All the pleasure of living in deepest rurality with roe deer in the field across the way yet within a few effortless hours of the capital.

My feeling of smug self satisfaction was somewhat dampened by the persistent drizzle and the timing of the next bus. However, there was a second hand book shop close by and where better to while away an enforced twenty minute wait.

A funny off-key bell and then the door opened on to a maze of wooden book-cases packed from floor to reach-up-high. The fiction section was a journey to the past, to books from my childhood on book-cases at home, to visits to the library, to school prizes chosen for their worthiness and to unsought Christmas presents given with the same good intentions. Names of old favourites, some barely remembered; titles from the spines of novels seen but never opened or opened, glanced at and closed within a few seconds; books I thought I should have read or ought to have read or maybe just thought I had read; famous authors and famous titles and many that were once widely popular but now out of print; they were all there.

Does anyone read Dornford Yates these days? He was hugely successful between the wars. Short stories, humorous tales, thrillers, crime novels, political and fantasy novels - there seemed to be no genre he couldn't tackle. He even wrote lyrics for a musical which ran to 124 performances!

He is still in print and even available as e-books. I've never read a word that he wrote.

Pearl S Buck, winner of the Pulitzer prize and Nobel prize for Literature has been honoured by appearing on a postage stamp in the USA. Why have I never read any of her works?

The book-shop reminded me of the public library I haunted as a child in the nineteen fifties. Our local one was located in what had been the county gaol. The alcoves for the different sections – children, adult fiction, non-fiction - must have been, now that I think about it, the old cells with the barred doors removed. I wasn't aware of any custodial significance as I searched for Just William, Billy Bunter or the latest sci-fi adventure. The books were reminders of the recent wartime shortages having no dust jackets and stout rebound covers. Occasionally, you would come across the stamped imprint "Salvage copy" which meant nothing to me at the time but bore witness to whence the book had been acquired.

"... and get me a good murder..." was the usual rejoinder from my mother when she asked where I was going though she also had a predilection for historical romances by Georgette Heyer which always seemed strangely out of character.

Browsing along the aisles of the shop, I spied a copy of East Lynne, that convoluted Victorian melodrama that was so popular there must have been a copy in every literate household in Britain. Famous for its misquote "Dead and never called me mother ", it was serialised, published as a whole, adapted for the stage many times, and made into a film on several occasions and in several guises. We had a copy as part of a set that included Lorna Doone, Robinson Crusoe and The Count of Monte Cristo. I did read Robinson Crusoe and The Count of Monte Cristo remains one of my all time favourites but East Lynne defeated me after a few pages.

The only version I have every experienced was a spoof, a five minute lampoon of the whole thing written for an amateur fund raising concert in the local church hall and very funny it was too.

Recently, I came across The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler. It stirred even more memories of books encountered in earlier years when I seemed to have time to spend whole days with a book. He reminded me of The Coral Island by R.M. Ballantyne a book that I can now scarcely recall but which still evokes a residual feeling of enjoyment. Strangely, The Gorilla Hunters by the same writer, that I must have been given as present, sat, unopened, in its dust-jacket in my bedroom bookcase for years.

Arthur Mee, compiler of The Children's Encyclopedia deserves not to be forgotten. That strange collection of stories, facts many of which were dubious to say the least, jingoistic history, puzzles games, things to make and do which was so middle class that it assumed that the reader's family would have at least a maid if not a cook as well.

Detective writers featured prominently. Paper backs by Leslie Charteris whose hero, The Saint, had a little haloed stick man symbol and John Dickson Carr with his complex plots, were tucked into odd corners of the house usually by the same reader who had requested "a good murder" from my library visits.

In my early teens there were the satanic thrillers of Dennis Wheatley – The Devil rides out and others in that genre and then the discovery of Ian Fleming's James Bond. Does anyone actually read the Bond books any more or do we all just see the latest blockbuster film?

The rain stopped and I left the little bookshop but not before purchasing a couple of Simenon's Maigret stories just for old times sake. Do you remember the black and white T.V. series with the classic introduction of the match striking on a wall leading into the accordion theme tune? That started me off on them all those years ago but I haven't read one for decades. Time to revisit some old favourites and a few missed out on over the years.