A paean to charity shops.
I'll be the first to admit that only slightly less depressing than a high street full of empty shops is one consisting almost entirely of charity shops. This shouldn't necessarily be the case however. When done right, they can be fabulous places and the "big names" usually manage to do the difficult job of balancing off the unsellable tat from the genuine bargains which they get donated, and to be fair, they can only work with what they're given; it's usually the more obscure, locally based organisations in outlets where the paint is almost invariably peeling which let the side down. Even then though they're always worth a quick browse, especially if they've got a hefty CD rack, where I can almost always manage to find one single or another from the 90s to add to my unhealthily sized collection of dance music and incredibly guilty pleasures, or sometimes both.
Best of all though are the dedicated second hand charity bookshops. Admittedly, for the most part the fiction sections are usually full of intolerable trash, although I've still managed to pick up some Will Self from my local one. Where it continues to amaze me is in what it gets outside of the holiday reading cast-offs. Last time I paid a visit I picked up a first edition hardback of Roy Jenkins' biography of Churchill (complete with message inside from whomever gave it as a Christmas present), as well as Francis Wheen's Tom Driberg biog and have in the past got E.H. Carr's multi-volume history of early Soviet Russia, Bakunin on Anarchy, David McDuff's superb translations of both Crime and Punishment and the Brothers Karamazov and too many other great discoveries to list. Today's haul still must be one of the best yet:
The Prophet Armed - Trotsky 1879 - 1921 by Issac Deutscher (paperback) (also previously got his rather thin Stalin biog from the same place)
Michael Foot by Mervyn Jones (hardback)
As If by Blake Morrison (hardback)
The Gulag Archipelago - Second Volume by Solzhenitsyn (paperback) (got the first from the same place some time back, as well as the First Circle and One Day in the Life of...)
Kalki by Gore Vidal (paperback)
How much? £5.50 the lot. I also nearly picked up Peter Ackroyd's biog of Thomas More, but thought it'll probably still be there next time.
Every town deserves a similar shop, and for every dismal, run-down charity hovel attempting to sell mouldy boardgames, hornpipe trousers and flowery 70s shirts, there's one that's hosting a treasure trove, even if not one to you personally, just waiting to be discovered. Try it sometime.
Best of all though are the dedicated second hand charity bookshops. Admittedly, for the most part the fiction sections are usually full of intolerable trash, although I've still managed to pick up some Will Self from my local one. Where it continues to amaze me is in what it gets outside of the holiday reading cast-offs. Last time I paid a visit I picked up a first edition hardback of Roy Jenkins' biography of Churchill (complete with message inside from whomever gave it as a Christmas present), as well as Francis Wheen's Tom Driberg biog and have in the past got E.H. Carr's multi-volume history of early Soviet Russia, Bakunin on Anarchy, David McDuff's superb translations of both Crime and Punishment and the Brothers Karamazov and too many other great discoveries to list. Today's haul still must be one of the best yet:
The Prophet Armed - Trotsky 1879 - 1921 by Issac Deutscher (paperback) (also previously got his rather thin Stalin biog from the same place)
Michael Foot by Mervyn Jones (hardback)
As If by Blake Morrison (hardback)
The Gulag Archipelago - Second Volume by Solzhenitsyn (paperback) (got the first from the same place some time back, as well as the First Circle and One Day in the Life of...)
Kalki by Gore Vidal (paperback)
How much? £5.50 the lot. I also nearly picked up Peter Ackroyd's biog of Thomas More, but thought it'll probably still be there next time.
Every town deserves a similar shop, and for every dismal, run-down charity hovel attempting to sell mouldy boardgames, hornpipe trousers and flowery 70s shirts, there's one that's hosting a treasure trove, even if not one to you personally, just waiting to be discovered. Try it sometime.
Labels: books, charity shops, miscellany, non-politics, personal shit
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