More and more books

At the weekend Dom and J-M were staying so we all went over to our favourite Charity Shop, Emmaüs. We had some clothes and odds and ends that we didn’t sell at the last Brocante (boot/garage sale) in September and J-M’s old TV.

Having handed in our donations we then went to the shop and proceeded to stock up with more ‘junk’, mainly books. My pile consisted of:

The Penguin Book of English Short Stories
The Second Penguin Book of English Short Stories
Angel Pavement by J.B. Priestley
The Centaur by John Updike
A Fanatic Heart, selection of stories by Edna O’Brian
Selected Poems 1957-1981 by Ted Hughes
Marlene by Marlene Dietrich
The Client and Playing for Pizza, two books by John Grisham

 Average price 1€ (1$32/£0.83) for each.

 While I was looking through the books when we got home, I found a voucher for a free aperitif at a Chinese Restaurant in Bordeaux – wonder if it’s still valid?

The funniest part was that I recognized the name written in the front of the first Penguin book. I also knew that that person was living in the North of France back in the 70s. One of the retired ladies who come to the house for English conversation has an unusual name and I know that her daughter studied English. When she came to the house on Tuesday I showed her the book and yes, it was her daughter. It was the year she went to London as an au pair. What a strange coincidence!

I have started with Playing for Pizza. I know nothing about American football. Surprise, surprise, I’m really enjoying it

A Farewell to Arms

I finished the book today. If you haven’t read it I recommend it. I didn’t like Catherine Barkley. I felt that her character was too wishy washy, there was nothing about her that you could get your teeth into. I seem to remember thinking something similar of the leading lady in ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’.

Anyway, this post is about a strange and interesting coincidence. In the book, while Frederic Henry is having his wounds tended to, the doctor says ‘You will have nothing to worry about if it doesn’t infect and it rarely does now’. Amongst our purchases at the auction in Limoges this week we picked up a leaflet written for French surgeons in 1914. The leaflet explains how German bullets are smooth and leave clean wounds that do not infect, are easy to deal with and heal well. Allied bullets however, left a lot of damage and danger of infection, etc. as they shattered on impact. How is that for propaganda? Even your wounds healed better if you were on the right side.