What are you reading?
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Yesterday (after a busy morning brushing 6 bags of sand into our pressure washed block paving... hard work), Mrs A wanted to go pokemonning. So I went a-browsing and hit the motherload with these four:
Everyone loves a deal. Buy 4 get the cheapest free, and a further 25% off. Just as well as Oxfam used books ain't a pound for a hardback like in my usual weekly haunts. I've looked through them briefly already.
The Grass Gardening book was originally the most expensive at £25 but was cheapest at £3.99 so was... free. Go figure.
My mother loved adding ornamental grasses into borders for their structural/architectural qualities. This is another truly lovely gardening book to flick through. Added to wife's collection.The London Interiors is a masterwork of interior photography to enjoy & study, while the other London book has superb sketches fascinating for an historian or artist. Both bargains at a mere 5 & 6 quid.
The fourth on Japanese Swordmanship I nearly snatched from the shelf, in really good nick too. Pricey at £20 (£16.50 new in 1981).
Quality martial arts books are rare in charity shops; there was also a 1st ed Karate by Funakoshi but I passed as it was in rather poor condition.So £23 spent, which will bring a lot of pleasure
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I just finished rereading Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia.
I’ll be in Barcelona twice this fall, both for scientific conferences.
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It’s largely a chronicle of his life (hippie surfer baker chef) up to when he opened the Tartine bakery. It’s a good story. There’s also a good bit of it dedicated to recipes that use day old bread - fancy ones! - and various permutations like baguettes, English muffins and brioche.
But in the middle of all that is the base recipe and how he developed it. How it’s supposed to look (big holes, baked very dark), how it’s supposed to taste (not sour. Chad doesn’t like sour).
Also pictures. The soupy mess that I get when I use his recipe is not a failure - it’s how it’s supposed to look! It’s what gets you the big holes! He goes on to tell how to make it come together again, something not in the base recipe.
Read it straight through in one sitting. I’ll read the part with the method again before my next bake.
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A lovely book containing amusing and thoughtful poems that will delight any gardener.
If you can find it! I've failed to find another copy to buy worldwide...
My 50p thrift shop copy looked near mint in its dust jacket, but on opening the book
the 1994 spine binding is terrible quality. Cracked, repaired, come away from the hard cover again, a page loose. Close it and it looks fine again
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@jon-nyc Have you read The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón? Novel set in Barcelona, 1945. Murder, madness, doomed love…
My friend said it was a must-read. I enjoyed it, but maybe not as much as she did.
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Just finished listening to this:
I really enjoyed it. Hearing about how he grew up poor in the projects and made it to Harvard than HLS and then how he stumbled into Goldman through the back door was interesting. And his inside take on the great financial crisis was interesting and brought back a lot of my own memories.
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