четверг, 3 января 2013 г.

Письма Миссис Талл:"Book shops"

Продолжаю публиковать письма нашей замечательной англичанки Миссис Талл, написанные несколько лет назад.

Book shops

    There are plenty of shops for us to look at as we go, and I will point out some of my favourites. One favourite is where we go first. This is Grindleys book shop, a very good shop owned by a local family, they are always most helpful. Like you, I love bookshops, and consider them, and libraries as my natural habitat. We are here to collect the book and audio tape of  "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats", by T.S. Eliot, which I am sending to you.

Eliot was an immensely serious and influential poet, but these poems represent his lighter side. He was a cat lover, and wrote these poems for fun, I have always enjoyed them, especially "Macavity; The M ystery Cat". I' ve always been a Sherlock Holmes fan, and Macavity is a play on the name of Moriarty, Sherlock's great enemy. The poems have been adapted into the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, called simply "Cats" - which I also hope to send to you. Both Hannah and I have seen this in London, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do. I am particularly impressed by the costumes, and will welcome your comments. This should be ready to be sent off at the weekend. Tearing ourselves away from the books, we start back, and will stop at the bank. I sort out my money, reeling with shock at how little I have got left in my personal bank account. I am grateful to Roger for sorting out my finances over the years.

Like a lot of people, I like surfing the net, and I've started to buy goods on-line. I actually want to do my household shopping on-line, and I plan to start doing that this summer. One of my favourite sites is Amazon.co.uk, which sells books, music and lots of other things. They are very efficient. You can order books in advance of publication, and they are delivered to the house on the day they are released. My copy of the new Harry Potter was delivered at 8.30 am on the morning of its publication, so I was pleased about that.

This hasn't changed my fondness for book shops though. While I was at Grindley’s, I spotted a book which I thought you'd like, it's called 'The Nation's Favourite Love Poems'. These were selected in a listener poll conducted by Radio Four. They range from old to modern, and were published when they had been selected. So I bought it for you. Then, when we went to the Globe I found in with the tickets, a gift certificate from Amazon books, offering ё3.00 off any purchase from Amazon. So, I've bought you the audio tape too. I'm playing it as I write this to you. The actress Judi Dench, is reading the most popular poem chosen, called "How do I love thee" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who is one of my favourite poets. She had the nerve to defy her ferociously strict and protective father, and eloped to Italy with the poet Robert Browning. She wrote this poem for him. It is a lovely poem, and I would, I think, appreciate it more if I could stop sneezing.

We now have Burns 'My love is like a red red rose.' I will post the book and the tape this week, and I hope you will enjoy them. There are about eighty poems altogether, so I hope there will be one or two you will like. Amazon deliver abroad I think, so let me know what book you'd like for Christmas! I know it's early, but it'll give you time to think.

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