I think the main idea is that the bookcase is stocked up with chuck-outs from the nearby regular library and that commuters take them and return them - or not - as they see fit. I suspect that this arrangement is topped up by local residents, possibly people something like ourselves, who see this bookcase as a handy way of getting rid of their own no-longer wanted books, in a way which gives them some chance of a good home, an entirely understandable sentiment. One might be dumping one's stuff, but one did once care for it and it is nice if one can do better than the dump. Whatever the case, over the months, we have come across all kinds of interesting stuff there.
I don't think we have yet deposited, mainly because it would involve trekking back from the northbound platform with the books to be deposited, quite a walk, or carrying them through a day out in London. Rather feeble reasons really, but enough to block a deposit, at least so far.
This day's haul consisted of three books.
One, Edith Wharton's 'The Age of Innocence', in a not very attractive Penguin retro format, photographically reproduced rather than printed properly. But a book of the right age to be consumed as a costume drama, very much of the same period as much of Agatha. I expect it will go down one or other of us smoothly enough - although its length at just over 350 pages may tell against it. Oddly, for a reasonably well known author, not hitherto read by either of us.
Two, a book of poems by Yrsa Daley-Ward, a handsome looking girl of mixed Jamaican-Nigerian heritage, brought up in the north of England. A rather arty production, as books of poetry which are not going to sell in large numbers often are. The wrapping is rather low on provenance and I did think vanity publication, but there is a bit inside the back cover saying printed in Germany by Amazon Distribution GbBH of Leipzig. No idea what sort of thing this outfit gets up to, and google only turns up German. See illustration above. Speculation: self publication offered as a staff perk to all the girls and boys who work the warehouse on zero-hours contracts.
Cover a bit loud, but the poems themselves are printed rather nicely. Perhaps I shall read some of them.
Three, 'The Book of the Law', a little red book in plastic covers, a slimmer version of Mao's little red book of the late sixties. Some kind of a revelation, delivered from on high to someone in Cairo in 1904 and first printed by an outfit called Ordo Templi Orientis, based in Berlin, in 1938. Were they some kind of affiliate of the branch of the Nazis who went in for runes and pre-Christian religions? This version including a facsimile of the original autograph and printed in Canada for Red Wheel/Weiser of Maine. Who, from a glance at reference 1, appear to be the same sort of publisher of bizarre exotica as is to be found in the vicinity of the British Museum or Cecil Court.
Priced at $7.95, rather a lot for a very small book.
It looks to be twaddle, with possibly unpleasant strands running through it and there may well be a connection to aforementioned Nazis. I don't think I am going to make time to read it and given that BH did not approve & did not want the thing in the house at all, I think I shall strip the covers off and give it over to Compost Bin No.1, from whence it can, in due course, ascend back on high, from whence it came.
Reference 1: http://redwheelweiser.com/p.php?id=2.
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