Latest finds and a lovely new bookshop

It's been a great couple of weeks for book buying (or a terrible one, if you consider the feelings of my sagging shelves...)

I'd been trying to visit the new Bethany Trust bookshop on Leith Walk for some time, but so far it's only open on Wednesdays, owing partly to a lack of volunteers. I'm not sure why that should be the case, as some of the other specialist bookshops in Edinburgh seem to have people almost falling over one another to help, so I do hope some of them make their way to Bethany soon. 

Last week I finally got to the shop, and what a lovely shop it is - beautifully laid out, attractive displays, friendly people, comfortable sofas, and, of course, great books. Prices are low, bargains are to be had - so of course I had to have some. 

Then it was on to the always fruitful St Columba's Hospice shop, and here are the results of my morning:

I've only read one Angela Carter - Nothing Sacred, a collection of journalism and other writings - and that was so long ago I can't remember a thing about it; it's time, I think, to try her again. Similarly, the only encounter I have had with Nora Ephron is Heartburn - the film based on her marriage to Carl Bernstein - but a woman who says 'Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age of thirty-five you will be nostalgic for by the age of forty-five.' is probably on my wavelength. 

St Columba's is, by the way, also a wonderful resource for those of a creative bent. I am not one of those people, but in seeking out a knitting pattern for my mother I had a joyful time revisiting the 'woolies' of my childhood - the shop has an enormous stock of patterns dating from the 60s and 70s, plus jars and jars of knitting needles and stacks of lovely fabrics. 

Later in the week, I paid a little visit to one of my very favourite charity shops. The Shelter shop in Dalry Road is an absolute gem, with the friendliest staff and numerous regular customers.  While some shops seem to think all peopl want are the latest paperbacks, this one somehow seems to attract donations of interesting books and rare DVDs, giving it a loyal and devoted following. 

After eyeing up this copy of Winter in Thrush Green for some days, I finally succumbed - as a teenager I read lots of 'Miss Reads', and I'm looking forward to escaping to the village, the school, and what Elizabeth Bowen described as 'pages tingling with zest, eagerness, dismay, sometimes amusement'.  Miss Read was the pen name of Dora Jesse Saint, who actually attended the same school as me in Bromley. Her family had moved to the area from London for the sake of her mother's health - hard to imagine nowadays, when the town is a huge commuter base with precious little green space left.

My other Shelter purchase was James Runcie's Grantchester Mystery, Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil. I've now acquired four books in this series, and haven't yet read any of them, though I like the TV adaptations. 

I heard James Runcie speak at Blackwells bookshop a few years ago and he was a most interesting person, explaining that he wanted to write about social history and crime whilst at the same time looking at the pace of change in modern British life. When his late father Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, was dying, an 'escalation of clergymen' visited. James realised that they, unlike most of us, were 'equipped with a script, a language, a way of talking about death.' In the past, people were made to think about death every Sunday in church; now they no longer have that religious vocabulary, so crime fiction, he suggested, perhaps provides 'a disguised and acceptable replacement.'

Finally, one more deliciously self-indulgent purchase, Maeve Binchy's A Few of the Girls, this time from the Cats Protection shop, again in Dalry. This is a charity I always like to support, though their book selection can be a bit limited - but Maeve is a writer I have loved ever since I read Light A Penny Candle, probably over 30 years ago. It could have been my own story.

As a London child with no experience of Ireland, farms, large families or the Catholic Church, I was invited by a friend to spend Christmas on her father's dairy farm in County Waterford. Expecting some sort of Blyton-esque rural idyll, I was in for a shock - but I adored every minute of it and returned frequently for many years. My Irish friends have mixed feelings about Maeve but I love her still; she was someone who saw the essential goodness in people, and her ear for dialogue, and for the nuances of Irish speech, never fails to take me right back to those first days on the farm, sharing a bed with my friend and her sister and waking in the dark early morning to hear their father calling the boys to milk the cows, or sitting at the oilcloth-covered kitchen table as vast pans of potatoes were dished out, and the farmhands chattered away so fast that I had not the slightest idea what they were saying. 

RIP Maeve, and thank you for all the hours of pleasure your work has given me.