Tuesday, October 21, 2014

More collages - books and cats

More collages, mostly books but one of Lucky & Phoebe. The photo of Phoebe on the bonnet of my car was taken a few months ago but the other two were taken just last weekend.

I've bought a few books in the last month. A few were bargains but most of them weren't. I bought some Greyladies & Girls Gone By books from Gill Bilski, a bookseller in the UK who specializes in children's books. The books were on sale but the postage wasn't. Still, by the time I'd chosen the books I wanted, a minor detail like postage wasn't going to stop me. I've also borrowed a lovely stack of books from my library, including the new biography of Queen Victoria by A N Wilson & a biography of Mary Gaunt, whose novel Kirkham's Find I read & loved earlier this year.

If these books were on a shelf rather than piled on my desk, I'd call them my Shelf of Shame. Of course, there isn't a spare shelf in the house so they're sitting on my desk reproaching me every time I look at them. These are the books I took from the tbr shelves to read next because I read a review on a blog or someone in my online bookgroup mentioned one of them. Some of them have been sitting there a very long time but their spot on the tbr shelves has long since been filled by another book so there's no going back. Extra brownie points for anyone who can work out all the titles (except for the Wodehouse on the bottom right, that's too hard. It's The Adventures of Sally).

Speaking of the tbr shelves, I still need to find room for all the books in the recently bought photo. I've already had to resort to stacking books horizontally & I think I need to do some more shuffling.

10 comments:

  1. I certainly understand your "Shelf of Shame." Can I try to persuade you to take 3 of them off of it and read them? "The Forsyte Saga," "The Painted Veil," and "My Family and Other Animals." Three great books, very different from each other but each excellent and on my all-time favorites list (if such a list existed).

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    1. I've read Vols 1 & 2 of the Forsytes, the one on the desk is Vol 3. Thanks for the recommendations. I also have the audio book of My Family... read by Nigel Davenport so maybe I could listen to that & read one of the others?

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  2. I had a huge huge clear out this year, I donated about 500 books to the Lifeline Book fair which is a massive event here. Consequently my Shelf of Shame is in the "library corridor" (a long hallway) so I can scuttle past it. ;)

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    1. I've had several big clearouts over the years but not for quite a while. I feel I'm down to the core collection (as we say in Library Land)! Trouble is the number of unread books is fast catching up to the ones I've read.

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  3. I love "shelves of shame" Just think of them as "reserves for the Winter ...." then they are things of pride lol an investment for future days ha ha
    Oh and I second the Durrell encouragement..Audio is fine :0)

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    1. I definitely think of them as reserves for the future. I'm keeping a lot of authors & bookshops in business! Of course, that argument would be better if I didn't read a lot of books by dead authors...

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  4. Lovely group of books. Don't worry, most of us have the shelf of shame. By the way what are the red spined books. I know they are familiar but can't remember publisher. You have several stacked there on your shelf.

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    1. The red books are Vintage Classics. I love them but, as you can see, haven't read many of them!

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  5. Lovely book collection! I'd love to collect tons of great books by great writers, but I currently do not have the space^^
    I have one question: What is the name of the book on top of Victoria?

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  6. Thank you. Sorry, I can't make out the book above Victoria. It's a library book but I can't even make out the call no which might be a clue.

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