Retrospective: Bigger Worlds

Fifi's excitement at being in a bookshop as sheerly, spectacularly big as Foyles - in London, where we were in early Decmber - was a reminder of the limitations of our little world here - reinforced today by The Sunday Times devoting a mere half a page (again) to Books. One reviewed only. Foyles's section on Vampire Stories - which seem to have become a sub-genre of teenage fiction - held her mesmerised. Pleasingly she was able to dole out some advice to a fellow browser, a lady buying something for her teenage daughter. Fifi obviously looks like the expert she really is in this line. (She can get through one of these fang-gnashing tomes, and most are pretty bulky, in a matter of hours.)

I shared the excitement, in this and other literary emporia, but in my case it was somewhat moderated by the fact I was keeping myself on a tight rein in terms of increasing my library, for similar reasons to my equally cautious approach to the purchase of CDs. So I restricted myself to the following: Pamuk's The Black Book (which I just haven't seen on shelves lately over here); Neil Robert's Ted Hughes: A Literary Life; a recent collection of poems by Ian McMillan entitled Perfect Catch; Charles Causley's Collected Poems (from Foyles - haven't seen it anywhere else); and the obligatory graphic novel/comic book, Alan Moore's (oh, and Kevin O'Neill's)(why do I so often forget the artist?) The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Century 1910.

I've been semi-deliberately spinning out The Black Book so as not to rush the simple luxurious pleasure of reading Pamuk at his most Pamukian; but, I must admit, the practicalities of dealing with the Toad Work have also played a part in slowing me down. At times I've broken away from the mysteries of Istanbul to read Stanley Wells's Shakespeare & Co, one of the books I treated myself to in the splurge of last October, just to put myself on more familiar ground. Wells is not as exciting as some of the more recent writers on the bard and all things bardic, but he's solid and informative and sometimes that's all you want - especially at the beginning of the first term of the year.

I've mentioned Roberts's book before. I'm glad I bought it as it is likely to serve as a prelude to a major embrace of Hughes I'm planning for the year ahead. Of the other purchases I've now read, the latest adventure of the Gentlemen seemed disappointing, but I'll reserve judgement until I've got hold of the other two episodes that have been promised - according to one or two of the reviews I've come across.

That just leaves the poetry and I'm sort of holding myself back from two favourite writers - sort of delayed gratification in a way. It's good to have something to look forward to.