About a book

I want to tell you a story about a book ... or three.

In December I bought a copy of “The Folio Book of Days” by Roger Hudson. It’s extracts from diaries, letters, and other dated sources written by individuals over the centuries arranged by day of year. My plan was to read each day’s entries on the day through the year ... which I am doing, although it tends to be every few days that I return to it.

The entry on 30th March from George Beardmore read:

Another rocket [a V2], and worst of the lot, landed at the top of Uppingham Avenue [Harrow]. I remember some time ago cycling down Weston Drive into Uppingham and thinking that if a rocket landed there it would make a right mess. And it had, if only because the damned thing had landed plumb on all three mains - water, gas, electricity ... at 3.40 in the morning, killing nine people among whom was a nine-year-old boy who had been flung out of bed, through the rafters, and into a back garden ten houses away - at first, nobody had been able to find him.
As I watched the mass funeral (Union Jack, Bishop of Willesden, Civil Defence, Women's Voluntary Service, and the Controllers' cars lined up for three hundred yards) tears came to my eyes, not with the grief and distress caused to survivors but with the incalculable trouble to which they will be put, months and years of it, before they can resume any sort of normal life and the incident becomes only a tale to tell to the grandchildren. Even obtaining an everyday thing like soap has its problems, let alone the replacement of identity cards, ration books, personal papers, with which I can give some help.

It really struck home to me that this was how the war was for ordinary people and I wanted to read more so I bought the book from which it was taken, “Civilians at War: Journals, 1938-46”, and found it a fascinating read.

That left me wanting more from civilian writers of that era and by chance a few weeks later I discovered Persephone Books who re-print neglected fiction and non-fiction, mainly by women writers and mostly dating from the mid-twentieth century. Tucked away in their book list was "On the Other Side: Letters to my Children from Germany 1940–46" by Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg so I bought that too and I'm currently reading it.

But what struck me through this little meander through three books was that already I had things I wanted to say:

• about how I read and how I find books;
• about where I buy books from;
• about what's special about The Folio Society;
• about hardbacks versus paperbacks;
• about what's special about Persephone Books;
• about second hand versus new;
• ... and just what is special about a book

And so this blog was born. Let's see where it goes.