Saturday, July 07, 2007

Cheap reading


0707 cheap reading
Originally uploaded by rooruu.
Twenty minutes, one op shop (Goodwill/Oxfam/charity shop) and a pile of good reading. Almost French will be good for a friend soon to be on a long flight - I've read it and enjoyed it, the story of an Australian journalist's first year living in Paris, the joys and dislocations of another culture. If it ends up lost in a locker or left on a plane, no worries. I left the Anita Shreves for someone else - I know they're popular, but I find them somehow depressing, like betrayal is always the most likely scenario. Our Sunshine is Robert Drewe's take on the bushranger, Ned Kelly, the basis for the Heath Ledger film, while I hadn't seen the novel that inspired the film Nell before. Geoffrey Robertson's likely to be as good in prose as in speech, and he's damn fine at that. Ruby Wax, ditto, although she romps in different fields. Even though Paul Theroux never, in the Irish phrase, seems to have met anyone he likes better than himself, his travel journalism is still entertaining. Sophie Kinsella - I haven't read much of this kind of pastel-covered lighthearted-drawing-cover chicklit, but at this price, am happy to give it a whirl. The Lovely Bones was one of my books of the year last year, and Lucky, Alice Sebold's earlier memoir, has been on my list, in a quiet sort of way, ever since. And now it's found me.

Total if I'd bought the lot: easily under $20. The only thing cheap is the price....

And then if you don't like 'em, you send 'em back for someone else to find.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

oooh, what a haul! No second hand bookstores here - I think most of Toowoomba doesn't read - or if they do it's not stuff i want to read! Riding the iron Rooster was the first Theroux i read - loved it then and still re-read it every year or two. Enjoy!

Anonymous said...

So for every book you got did you give one way?

rooruu said...

Thanks, Caity!
Yes, Lynelle!