Back in March, I visited the 'largest secondhand book shop in the Midlands' – a converted farm somewhere in the middle of the Warwickshire countryside – and came back with a bumper crop of books. Today Pete and I went for a top-up trip. I spent £2 on four books from the Ten Bob Barn section:
1. Dirty Havana Trilogy by Pedro Juan Gutierrez
'One of the most celebrated novels to come out of Latin America in decades.' And 'an insane journey into the condemned soul of a sexual deviant'. I was obviously looking for saucy reads because I also bought a copy of…
2. The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl: What Belle Did Next
I haven't read the first Belle de Jour book, or her blog, but I'm imagining the content is much the same.
3. Bliss In Bali by J Chegaray
Any books on Bali are 'a goer' in my world. This one is a travelogue from 1955, when access was not easily granted, and where the writer discovers an island of taboos.
4. Odd Jobs: Portraits of Unusual Occupations by Nancy Rica Shiff
A photo-essay book featuring the kind of jobs careers advisors don't tell you about, including – to continue the saucy theme – condom tester, breast measurer, artificial inseminator, foot model, semen collector, cross-dressing headmistress and colonics therapist.
That's my reading sorted for summer then.
Oh and book number five was a gift from Pete: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides – "a transatlantic epic". Apparently I'll enjoy it. Hmm.