Hey there,
It's T from Thryft, taking over today's newsletter!
Since closing Second Story: Peace Edition, we’ve gone fully online and so we're more frequently in our office. In these two months (or so) of commuting to work, I’m pleased I’ve worked out for myself the best sort of book to take with me in the morning, on my hour-long journey! Admittedly this is first and foremost because I’d needed to entertain myself when my network isn’t working and I can’t doom scroll Instagram 😅 Although, of course, I don’t mind I’m spending my time on the train more meaningfully 😇
So, anyway, my perfect 🥞 BREAKFAST BOOK 🍳 has to be a. light in weight, of suitable size for holding open with one hand, b. preferably a collection of essays or short stories, they’re eas(ier) to get into and to complete, and c. not too dense, this is reading while I’m at best half awake, before my daily teh c siu dai (tea with evaporated milk, less sugar now I’m of a certain age 😅)!
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🌰 TL;DR 🌰 Books To Read When Commuting, In The Morning
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Three 🥞 Breakfast Books 🍳 from T's reading list
(It’s a breakfast book, in that it is breakfast for my mind 😅 Nothing too heavy, easy to consume, a nutritious experience to start the day with 😋)
84 Charing Cross Road
by Helene Hanff
Quite simply, it’d been a delight to go through Helene Hanff’s letters written across 20 years to Frank Doel, bookseller of Marks & Co., an antiquarian bookshop in London. Apt too, to have stumbled on it when restocking Second Story, for Helene’s a passionate secondhand reader. For instance, about annotating in books she says -
I wish you hadn’t been so over-courteous about putting the inscription on a card instead of on the flyleaf. It’s the bookseller coming out in you all, you were afraid you’d decrease its value. You would have increased it for the present owner. (And possibly for the future owner. I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages some one long gone has called my attention to.)
And again -
The Book-Lovers’ Anthology stepped out of its wrappings, all gold-embossed leather and gold-tipped pages, easily the most beautiful book I own including the Newman first edition. It looks too new and pristine ever to have been read by anyone else, but it has been: it keeps falling open at the most delightful places as the ghost of its former owner points me to things I’ve never read before… I do think it’s a very uneven exchange of Christmas presents. You’ll eat yours up in a week and have nothing left to show for it by New Year’s Day. I’ll have mine till the day I die – and die happy in the knowledge that I’m leaving it behind for someone else to love. I shall sprinkle pale pencil marks through it pointing out the best passages to some book-lover yet unborn.
Nine Yard Sarees
by Prasanthi Ram
Late last year at Second Story we’d hosted “Centrepieces”, a reading and open mic night with Ethos Books, at which Prasanthi read from Nine Yard Sarees. At the moment I’m halfway through her “short story cycle”, it’s a set of 11 interlinked stories portraying “the lives of nine women from 1950 all the way to 2019”, from a Tamil Brahmin family. While my copy’s new, we’ve got a range of Ethos titles in our store possibly suitable too, for breakfast reading!
The Doctor’s Wife
by Sawako Ariyoshi
The Doctor’s Wife’s a novel “based on the life of the first doctor in the world to perform surgery for breast cancer under a general anaesthetic”, that I’m looking forward to moving on to after I finish Nine Yard Sarees!
It’s its cover design that caught my eye when I was sorting through books for our store; I’d recognised its layout, having first encountered (and purchased) a Kodansha International title in Jimbōchō Book Town, Tokyo (The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi).
Speaking of, it’s a tip I’ve picked up / found useful – when looking to add to your TBR, go with publishers of books / works you enjoy - especially if they’re small and/or independent. (You can filter for publisher(s) in our store when browsing, just saying 😉 )
Write us!
Let us know how you make time to read, and if you’ve got tips for making time to read to share!
Otherwise, find 🥞 Breakfast Books 🍳 for yourself in our store!
Sincerely,
T from Thryft