Lush Places: a bit of light reading
BROWN paper packages tied up with string are arriving thick and fast at The Book Shop, Bridport.
It’s all part of World Book Night, when 20,000 ‘passionate book lovers’ will give away 1,000,000 books this weekend.
And I’m one of them.
I had been hoping for a thin tome, maybe Alan Bennett’s autobiography or the children’s book Northern Lights by Philip Pullman. Despite having no illustrations, they’d be relatively simple to digest, and I could perhaps persuade some of my intended ‘reluctant reader’ recipients in Lush Places to grab hold of a copy with open arms.
Because brevity and alacrity are my middle names. And theirs too.
But I am on the reserve list.
So I will be picking up 48 copies of Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and set in 1960s civil war-torn Nigeria.
I will need all my powers of persuasion to give this book away to the Greek chorus of drinkers in the part of the pub we call Compost Corner. Hell, I might even have to pay them to take it off my hands. And then there’s the allotment group, the country dancers, the quilters, the church choir and the school PTA to contend with.
I can picture it now.
‘Haven’t you got anything smaller?’
‘Sorry, no, try the mobile library.’
Not that I’m complaining. At least we still have one.
Happy reading everyone.
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You’d better start doing some strengthening exercises for your back before picking up your weighty allotment of books. Good luck with spreading the good news about reading. You might want to polish up the look of a slightly crazed literary evangelical, as that might make it harder for the denizens of the Compost Corner to say ‘no’ to you.
Now there’s a funny thing. Last evening I was sitting having a nice glass of my usual medicine out in Symondsbury when a young lady offered me a copy of Margaret Atwood’s ‘Blind Assassin’. Well, it’s a long time since a young lady offered me anything so I accepted. At first sight it looks like a dose of Victor Hugo but without the jollity. Anyway I shall give it, what we discerning literary figures would describe as, a good belt. The whole wheeze seems a good idea to me, let’s hope that it meets with the success it deserves.