I’m trying to sort out my books, to send those ones I no longer read or maybe no longer like or maybe why I ever had bought it in the first place, to send all of those to a charity book shop. I guess I could try and sell them on the internet, but there are so many big dealers who do the same… and also while we are watching the pennies we can’t always be as charitable as we might wish so to give away good books in a good condition to a shop which might raise funds for those in need seems like a good idea,
The only problem is… going into any bookshop is dangerous… but to go into a second-hand bookshop is even more so, where there all sorts of temptations on offer. I guess the balance ends up about right, I take in thirty books and come out with one…
One that I came out with the other day was ‘The Collected poems of Sidney Keyes’ a poet I had never heard of until the then. The collection had a memoir and notes by Michael Meyer and a preface by the poet Herbert Read. But who was Sidney? He was born in Kent in 1922 and died in Tunisia in 1943, just before his twenty-first birthday… tragic for any boy to die so young, tragic that a young man of such incredible talent, prodigious talent should die, apparently killed after he had been captured.
And Freda Green? Freda w. Green was given it or bought it at Christmas, 1951. There is no way I could ever find who she was – or is – her name is not uncommon, but the book is in such good condition, nearly twenty-five years after Freda had it that she must have taken good care of it. There is no cover, so does that mean it was well-used and the cover fell to pieces? Who knows, who will ever know?
More on Sidney in another post.
Lois Elsden 