Friday, April 07, 2006

Can Books Propagate?

There I was happily wandering about looking at the pavement when all of a sudden a bag full of books appeared in my hand.

I've no idea how it happened to be there.

I swear.

Clearly my books are breeding, like there is some sort of greenhouse effect going on on my shelves - like the artichoke plants I put in the greenhouse at the weekend which suddenly shot up - although I'd like to think that was the effect Kafka on the Shore had on them.

If truth be told I went in search of a paperback copy of John Clare's complete poems - didn't find it and not sure if it exists - and Iain Sinclair's book about John Clare, Edge of the Orison: In the Traces of John Clare's 'Journey Out of Essex' - out of print apparently and waiting for paperback edition - but I came out with The Third Policeman, Turn of the Screw and two more Murakami books. Oh and a new notebook, and a collection of Virginia Woolf essays - the Penguin 70th birthday edition of Street Haunting. And I've yet to spend the book tokens my fellow slaves at the bank gave me as a leaving present. So after those are spent and I've purchased the various volumes which make up Brecht's letters and diaries from a secondhand bookshop near where I worked, I'm going to attempted not to buy any books for two months ...

... although I did see a complete set of e e cummings complete works the other day ... and a hardback copy of AL Kennedy's On Bullfighting because my paperback copy fell apart the other day ...

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