Tuesday, March 03, 2009

In The Market For Books

No while it half of the book loving population were in the outskirts of Bristol grabbing as many free books as they could this weekend. My first thought was how did they find out that this was happening? Second was are there any more places like that I am missing out on? Third thought was damn them all I am very jealous and final forth thought was maybe it was for the best as I would have been uncontrollable in that environment.
However an unplanned wander down the Thames and the South Bank this weekend made myself and the Non Reader (who raised eyebrows tutted and went of to get coffee when he saw what was looming) stumbled across the book market.


I always forget it exists (possibly financially a good thing) and whenever I find it again I get really excited as I have bought some absolute gems here before. So I browsed... for 50 minutes. There were hundreds of books and I had to make sure I looked through them and more books...

And more... and lots of my favourite orange spined Penguins and some lovely first editions...


But I didn't buy anything, not a single one. Doris Lessing's books about Cats almost tempted me as did a few old green Virago novels but in the end I left with nothing. I am wondering if I might be ill?

8 comments:

Unknown said...

I knew about the Bristol book mountain (via the Amazon sellers forum), and was very tempted to go - but the petrol cost is too much when you consider how many books you can fit in one car. If only it could have been closer then I'm sure it would have been a great day out!


No - events like that are very rare - so I don't think you're missing out too much!

Not buying any books? You must be ill!

Unknown said...

PS. The Bristol warehouse is still open today, tomorrow and possibly Thursday - so there's still chance to grab a book or two!

Anonymous said...

Wow! That mountain of books looks brilliant! I wish I lived in Bristol. When I was going to uni in Lancaster we had a book market in the main square of campus and I just loved it. I bought so many books there. It was the best. Of course I frequented the Oxfam charity shop bookstore too. You could always find good books in there. Bliss.

claire said...

I saw pictures of that warehouse on another blog, and was so jealous but also appalled to see those books so mishandled.. stepped on and what-not! But that book market you posted.. that's wonderful. And you bought nothing!! Nothing????!! :D

Unknown said...

They've just closed the Bristol warehouse - for health and safety reasons. I wonder if someone injured themselves climbing on the piles of books?

Jo said...

I don't think I could have left that market without buying anything at all!

Alyce said...

The books look fabulous, although I cringed to see people walking on the mountain of books.

Savidge Reads said...

I stayed away, I managed not to grab a train (and a spare carriage for the books) to Bristol. I havent bought a single book this week whihc is worrying. Agree with everyone who is disgusted, or slightly pained that they were just walking all over books, maybe thats why it closed... all the slippy covers!