August 11, 2008
The aim of this website is simple: to share my love reading, recommend books to others, and provide gift ideas for the book lovers in your life. This site came about simply to share the wonder and joy that books bring into our lives.
Upon entering a bookstore, I let out a little content sigh…I am home.
The shops of my choice have books to the ceiling, ladders and a selection of antique leather bound volumes so beautiful that they can only be described as art. Finding these shops is not an easy task in and of itself, but I long for the days browsing them once found.
BUT, my heart truely skips a beat when across the shop I see a glimmer of gold gilded pages; the sheen, effort, and love that goes into producing such art humbles me, and I love to run my finger up the edge of the pages. Even mass produced books with gilded pages give me the same, albeit smaller rush of emotion.
I am an equal opportunity book lover as i do have many mass produced paperbacks, which I consider junk food for the brain. They are the perfect escape after a long day. Through books I can try on lives as I would shoes, and travel to far off lands. I can be wealthy, poor, migrant or native.
So thus this blog and website are borne, to document my obsession, wishes, and love of gilded pages.
My undying thanks to my mother, who read me more stories then I could count, and to my teachers, for the gift of reading.
September 22, 2007
Why yes, I am insane. I am also a book collector, reader, and wishful writer…but first I am a collector.
Here is every book listed in the book and movie “84 Charing Cross Road”.
I have attacked this list with fervor. Do not be surprised if my next entry is not by me, but by my husband, informing you that my 4th bookcase collapsed on me, yet I died with a smile on my face, surrounded by gilded pages.
This list is NOT made by me! Credit goes to Diane Gross.
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A fellow HH fan, Diane Gross, has put together a list of the books and music scores that Helene ordered from the bookshop at 84 Charing Cross Road - ardent fans, take note and make your purchases!!! As Diane says, “Some don’t name the authors or titles, I just wrote what I read at 3am, so you might want to double-check my entries!” Doug Wilson has made a few amendments to some entries, and provided some more information on others - and the full list follows: (Thanks to both Diane and Doug!!!) 
Requested books:
- Austen, Jane - Pride & Prejudice
- Beloc, Hilaire - essays
- Beowulf (mentioned, but no interest in reading)
- Book Lover’s Anthology
- Cassell’s dictionary
- Cattulus - Loeb classic edition; (Latin text; verse trans. by Sir Richard Burton, prose trans. by Leonard Smithers–HH not a fan as the translators “cleaned up” the language)
- Chaucer - Canterbury Tales (”a modern English verison, not Old English or Anglo-Saxon”)
- Chesterfield - essays
- de Coverely, Sir Roger - papers
- Delafield - Diary of a Provincial Lady
- De Tocqueville - Journey to America
- Donne, John - Complete Sermons (p.78 - FPD says the sermons an only be found in the 40-vol. complete works)
- “Elizabethan poets”
- Goldsmith - essays
- Grahame, Kenneth - Wind in the Willows (w/Sheppherd illus.)
- Greek New Testament
- Hazlitt - Selected Essays
- Horace - Loeb classic edition
- Hunt, Leigh - Essays
- Johnson on Shakespeare (Oxford pr. ed.)
- Jonson - love poems
- Lamb - Essays of Elia (MacDonald Illus. Classics); Tales from Shakespeare
- Landor, Walter Savage - Works & Life of (includes “Imaginary Conversations;” one is Aesop & Rhodope)
- Latin Bible
- Latin New Testament (Anglican Vulgate; dictionary to Vulgate)
- MacDonald Illustrated Classics
- Memoirs of (Louis the) Duke de Saint-Simon - trans. by Francis Arkwright
- Newman, John Henry - Ideas of a University
- Oxford Book of English Prose
- Oxford Book of English Verse
- Oxford Dictionary (”Shorter”)
- Plato - Four Socratic dialogues (Oxford pr.)
- Plato - minor dialogues
- Pepys, Samuel - Diary
- Quiller-Couch - The Pilgrim’s Way
- Sappho - Loeb classic edition
- Shaw, George Bernard - dramatic criticisms; music criticisms; correspondence with Ellen Terry; 30 vol. Standard ed. (”for a friend”)
- Stevenson - Virginibus Puerisque (NOTE: Ruben Caban emailed me to let me know that the text of this book is on the web - a friend of his emailed him details of how to find it: ON-LINE Books Page - “click on the “Search our 6000+ listings” and enter the Author and Title and there it is”. Many thanks to Ruben and his friend Paul for this info!)
- Tristram Shandy (MacDonald Illus. Classics)
- Walton - Compleat Angler, Lives
- Woolf, Virginia - Common Reader (2 vols)
- Wyatt - love poems
June 18, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/475118.stm
No, I am not obsessed, why would you think such a thing? Oh…wait…I thought it too. Nevermind
June 17, 2007
Revisted and edited, but with the same spirit. Perhaps now I will have to visit Cleveland
http://www.84cc.com/
