Exploding Helicopters #1 You know how you go to the cinema and there’s a trailer for something with Christian Bale and a lot of hand grenades that looks amazing and for two minutes you get some sweet quick-fire explosions and some CGI shit and maybe a robot sidekick and a sweaty woman with big tits who knows kung fu and the dramatic rescue of someone’s dog and a few vampire killers and Rage Against The Machine on the soundtrack. And then everyone eating popcorn is like ‘woah’. Well, this new blog feature is a bit like that ‘woah’ feeling, as I share some of the best bits from a book I’ve read (minus all the CGI explosions and slow-motion running that will ultimately mean you are disappointed because Megan Fox doesn’t jump out of the book’s pages when you decide to read it yourself). Because I am nothing if not wholly appropriate at all times, I have chosen to mark this inaugral edition of Exploding Helicopters with a second-hand book about second-hand books. *cue audience tittering* Helene Hanff - 84 Charing Cross RoadPublication date: 1980Publisher: FuturaPrice then: £1.25Price now: £2.50Purchased from: Richard Booth’s Bookshop, Hay-On-Wye From the synopsis: “The very simple story of the love affair between Miss Helene Hanff of New York and Messrs Marks & Co, sellers of rare and second-hand books, at 84 Charing Cross Road, London.” “Thank you again for the beautiful book. I shall try very hard not to get gin and ashes all over it.” “DO YOU MEAN TO SIT THERE AND TELL ME YOU’VE BEEN PUBLISHING THESE MAMMOTH CATALOGUES ALL THESE YEARS AND THIS IS THE FIRST TIME YOU EVER BOTHERED TO SEND ME ONE? THOU VARLET?Don’t remember which restoration playwright called everyone a Varlet, I always wanted to use it in a sentence.” “All I have to say to YOU, Frank Doel, is we live in depraved, destructive and degenerate times when a bookshop - a BOOKSHOP - starts tearing up beautiful old books to use as wrapping paper… You tore that book up in the middle of a major battle and I don’t even know what war it was.” “WHAT KIND OF A PEPYS’ DIARY DO YOU CALL THIS?this is not pepys’ diary, this is some busybody editor’s miserable collection of EXCERPTS from pepys’ diary, may he rot.…PS: Fresh eggs or powdered for Xmas?” The edition I have includes the sort-of sequel, when Helene finally visits London after the publication of 84 Charing Cross Road and the death of her primary correspondent, Frank Doel. It’s in diary-form, and it felt more real to me than the letters did, because she worries about what to wear when she goes to publisher’s meetings and gets pissed off with people when they give her tours of places that she doesn’t give two shits about. But maybe it just felt more real to me because I was reading it on a sunny afternoon in Hyde Park and when she mentioned going to see the Brontë painting in the National Portrait Gallery, the one where Branwell has painted himself out, I was like ‘Dude, I was just there’. Anyway, don’t take my word for it. Above is a photo of my friend’s budgie, Yoshi, getting stuck in, and he’s a fucking bird-brain so what’s stopping you? (Also, because life is shit, 84 Charing Cross Road is now something called a Med Kitchen, but there is a nice history of the building and the Marks & Co business here.)

Exploding Helicopters #1

You know how you go to the cinema and there’s a trailer for something with Christian Bale and a lot of hand grenades that looks amazing and for two minutes you get some sweet quick-fire explosions and some CGI shit and maybe a robot sidekick and a sweaty woman with big tits who knows kung fu and the dramatic rescue of someone’s dog and a few vampire killers and Rage Against The Machine on the soundtrack. And then everyone eating popcorn is like ‘woah’.

Well, this new blog feature is a bit like that ‘woah’ feeling, as I share some of the best bits from a book I’ve read (minus all the CGI explosions and slow-motion running that will ultimately mean you are disappointed because Megan Fox doesn’t jump out of the book’s pages when you decide to read it yourself).

Because I am nothing if not wholly appropriate at all times, I have chosen to mark this inaugral edition of Exploding Helicopters with a second-hand book about second-hand books. *cue audience tittering*

Helene Hanff - 84 Charing Cross Road
Publication date: 1980
Publisher: Futura
Price then: £1.25
Price now: £2.50
Purchased from: Richard Booth’s Bookshop, Hay-On-Wye

From the synopsis: “The very simple story of the love affair between Miss Helene Hanff of New York and Messrs Marks & Co, sellers of rare and second-hand books, at 84 Charing Cross Road, London.”

“Thank you again for the beautiful book. I shall try very hard not to get gin and ashes all over it.”

“DO YOU MEAN TO SIT THERE AND TELL ME YOU’VE BEEN PUBLISHING THESE MAMMOTH CATALOGUES ALL THESE YEARS AND THIS IS THE FIRST TIME YOU EVER BOTHERED TO SEND ME ONE? THOU VARLET?
Don’t remember which restoration playwright called everyone a Varlet, I always wanted to use it in a sentence.”

“All I have to say to YOU, Frank Doel, is we live in depraved, destructive and degenerate times when a bookshop - a BOOKSHOP - starts tearing up beautiful old books to use as wrapping paper… You tore that book up in the middle of a major battle and I don’t even know what war it was.”

“WHAT KIND OF A PEPYS’ DIARY DO YOU CALL THIS?
this is not pepys’ diary, this is some busybody editor’s miserable collection of EXCERPTS from pepys’ diary, may he rot.
…
PS: Fresh eggs or powdered for Xmas?”

The edition I have includes the sort-of sequel, when Helene finally visits London after the publication of 84 Charing Cross Road and the death of her primary correspondent, Frank Doel. It’s in diary-form, and it felt more real to me than the letters did, because she worries about what to wear when she goes to publisher’s meetings and gets pissed off with people when they give her tours of places that she doesn’t give two shits about. But maybe it just felt more real to me because I was reading it on a sunny afternoon in Hyde Park and when she mentioned going to see the Brontë painting in the National Portrait Gallery, the one where Branwell has painted himself out, I was like ‘Dude, I was just there’.

Anyway, don’t take my word for it. Above is a photo of my friend’s budgie, Yoshi, getting stuck in, and he’s a fucking bird-brain so what’s stopping you?

(Also, because life is shit, 84 Charing Cross Road is now something called a Med Kitchen, but there is a nice history of the building and the Marks & Co business here.)