hay books report (outside by the pyramid)

today a grey, cool morning. maybe it will get better later? (allegedly yes says the bbc weather)

and now the hay books report (don't go expecting too many bargains)

- peter paul fuchs (ed.) 'the music theatre of walter filsenstein' (quartet encounters edition - usually reliable) - one squid. 'you turned right for felsenstein (left for brecht)' - david poutney in the introduction.

- peter conrad, 'where I fell to earth; a life in four cities' - one squid. ah. it's this peter conrad, the author of  the song of love and death a book about opera. one of his four cities was lisbon that's what drew horsemouth in. this is the one horsemouth has started reading (it goes quickly). 

here endeth the cinema bookshop bargain bin (outside by the pyramid).

 we go inside and the real prices begin.

- brian w. aldiss. 'the detached retina; aspects of SF and fantasy' (liverpool university press) - six squid. brian is reliably good, an amiable old duffer directing your attention to the early days of science fiction (before it was even really science fiction). (horsemouth wonders if outlaw bookseller or even book pilled have a copy).

- jad adams, 'madder music, stronger wine: the life of ernest dowson, poet and decadent' - ten squid. 

now dowson, and his poetry, feature in michael moorcock's the dancers at the end of time trilogy (horsemouth is a low-brow pleb really, this is where he heard of him). however, there are surprisingly few english decadents so anything on them is probably worth reading. 

- xavier de maistre, 'a journey around my room' - three squid fifty. horsemouth has heard about this (and now he has the chance to read it). 

- charles baudelaire, 'intimate journals' translated by christopher isherwood and with an introduction by w.h.auden, illustrated with drawings by baudelaire, panther paperback edition - three squid. 

so horsemouth's mum took him up to hay. whilst they were there the clouds parted and the young and beautiful took possession of the town. horsemouth would have stayed longer, bought more books and contemplated the beauties of humanity but he had underestimated the time he would need to sort through the racks and they had to high-tail it back to the car. 

on the way back they stopped in peterchurch (former home of bill glover) for some pub grub (and very nice it was too). horsemouth had a pint of the local beer ('otter') and the sun shone. 

horsemouth has of course been spoiled by being in london. the second hand bookshops, the charity shops, the bargain bins, the book boxes - it all leads to free, or virtually free, reading. the job dispatched him all over the city and gave him an hour off here, an hour off there, to raid the bookshops. he will be back for a chunk of september and will attempt to stock up ahead of the winter. 

in the evening horsemouth went for a quick walk up on the common. he was tempted by the storyville on grime but did not, in the end, watch it.