Edinburgh is just the place for thrifty, book-loving odd-balls.
Many areas, like Bruntsfield, Marchmont and Waverly sound like settings that Jane Austen has fabricated.
There is even a Bingham Park and, while I’ve yet to come across a Darcy Drive or a Wickham Way, it’s only a matter of time before mindful town planners restore the literary balance.
I suspect the city was designed by a brilliant, absent-minded professor of literature, who approached the task like the writing of an essay.
There are examples of sublime beauty, like the Balmoral hotel, the Walter Scott monument and of course Edinburgh castle, but they are clumsily linked by several hills, which pepper the city indiscriminately. The effect is similar to the reward felt by a reader who huffs and puffs their way through stodgy prose, wondering where it is all going, only to stumble suddenly on something quite profound.
Edinburgh
On Thursday, I stumbled across the St John’s charity bookshop in Stockbridge. A poster in the window said “Clearance! Everything 50 pence” and I was inside as fast as my little legs could carry me.
It was cluttered and reassuringly musty. Bookish types sporting oversized anoraks and tufty hair browsed stealthily, building discerning piles of poetry, murder mysteries and natural history.
While I prowled the store, several dismayed customers asked the elderly couple behind the counter why everything must go.
“We haven’t got enough volunteers to keep it going,” said the man.
“Now where am I going to go for my books?” asked one lady and sighed. “If only I’d known, I would’ve given up a few hours,” said an English man, who blinked a lot and bought the collected works of Oscar Wilde.
“Well, get stocking up,” said the old lady. “Anything that isn’t sold will go into recycling.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. Some of the titles I had been perusing were so promising that the thought of them condemned to shredding alongside household bills and letters from the bank sent a shiver coursing down my spine.
I was tragically limited by the confines (56 x 45 x 25cm including wheels) of my hand baggage allowance. Nevertheless, I managed to add six books to my collection. It only set me back £3, which is about the cost of a glossy magazine offering to make me beautiful and thin.
I am now the proud owner of: The Personality of Animals by the appropriately named H Munro Fox, The Childhood of Animals by Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell, Know Your Own IQ by H.J. Eyesenck, The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf, The Hill of Devi by E.M. Forster and most promisingly of all: The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism Volume 2 by Bernard Shaw.
I opened the most humble-sounding of them, Virginia Woolf’s The Common Reader on the plane earlier. I kept it open on the bus and then on the underground and even brought it to bed with me.
Roger Fry’s painting of Virginia Woolf Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Roger_Fry_-_Virginia_Woolf.jpg
We travelled well together. Ms Woolf seemed to understand the dilemmas of contemporary blogging as early as 1925.
In her chapter “Modern Fiction,” she asks what about and why and how we should be writing. Baffling questions that the amateur blogger faces every day.
Sometimes I steal snatches of conversations I’ve had and slap them onto the blogosphere. Other times I talk about love or meat or peeing audibly.
Occasionally I think about weighty things like politics or God and think I should write about these things too, yet I can find nothing more to say.
And then there are the times I dream of invention. I wonder whether my paltry life experience could ever be transformed and trapped within the dusty covers of a big fat book.
It’s worth remembering that unless you’re an academic, Woolf’s chapter title doesn’t age well. “Modern fiction” is by nature a relative term. But what she says about the dilemmas of writing may apply to anything from Tolstoy to Twitter. She asks us to:
Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions — trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.
Sometimes I get stuck inside the semi-transparent envelope. I know I’m there when words fail me, or I lose the desire to write. It takes a hilly city, with rough cobble-stoned streets, place names that make me feel like I am Elizabeth Bennet and charitable book-sellers to break the seal.
Kate Ferguson 
Just to bring it full coicle, do you know what it actually says on the sellotape on the literary gift boxes?
LikeLike
” life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.”
LikeLike
No way! Is it true? 🙂 My favourite company in the world. I’m minded to just keep ordering you presents regardless of whether there’s an occasion!
LikeLike
Dear Oddball K,
Fantastic article about your love for books and literature.I am glad you found your words flow and extremely glad you shared that paragraph – I had some thoughts of that before but I was unable to articulate them as beautiful as how Woofe had done it. Thanks for sharing.
I see myself more as a word person and sometimes I lose my muse as well. The creative bits of me hides away whenever I am stressed or thinking about analytical stuff. It’s like when the right part of me is functioning, the left bits stop the word flow. I have thoughts and emotions but they come in clusters rather than flow – these are the times I stop blogging. When do you usually get the writer’s block?
Also, by the way, have you had a chance to to measure your own IQ from the book yet?
Sincerely,
Oddball C
LikeLike
Dear Oddball C,
Many thanks for your lovely message.
It’s interesting that you see your left and right brain as so distinct! I’ve never noticed a particular difference in my own patterns of thinking. But I have noticed that when I feel confident, I experience a similar surge and can write with a very natural flow.
Sometimes I lose inspiration when I’m feeling dull or if I feel a bit sad or incompetent.
Writing is a very personal process though and is almost impossible to separate from your feelings.
LikeLike
I am thinking of Emily in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, who painfully sees after her death that the magic in an ordinary day on earth usually goes unnoticed. We all have the power to see and express the magic while we’re alive. What will we do with this Monday and Tuesday?
LikeLike
That is wonderfully true. The ordinary day has its own peculiar charms. It’s difficult to capture the beauty of the ordinary without it being snatched away, but I think becoming conscious of it is a good first step! Hoep you are having a nice ordinary Wednesday. 🙂
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Blogging Woolf and commented:
Traveling with Virginia Woolf
LikeLike
Knowing that you saved the books makes me happy. Shredding books… argh. The idea makes me upset. My sister is in grad school so she is college poor, but she sometimes sends me texts about odd sales she finds here and there. We had to build her another bookcase recently because she grew her collection. There is something about the smell of an old book and the feeling of well read and loved pages. It’s magic.
I hope you are enjoying or enjoyed your trip… I’d love to travel that area of the world. England is next for sure, but after that… the possibilities are endless. 🙂
LikeLike
I completely agree with you about the magic of books. Even though I don’t spend nearly as much time as I’d like reading, I find it comforting to be around them.
I hope you get to travel to that part of the world soon. If you like history and big Gothic buildings surrounded by lots of hills, Edinburgh is the place for you! Thanks for stopping by 🙂
LikeLike
Pingback: From Tolstoy to Twitter | omo10
just happened upon your blog – wonderful writing. I felt like I was reading the documentation of ‘great’ digital overthrow of the humble printing press in the 21st century. Will be sure to return regularly. Chapeau!
LikeLike
Thanks so much, Monsieur Paul! Here’s hoping the humble printing press can live on for a little bit longer. And if the digital revolution takes away our paper, it can’t rob us of our words! J’en suis sure 🙂
LikeLike
“..if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style..”
I would venture to say that with your post, you have broken the chains that bind you. Good form!
LikeLike
That’s lovely to hear, thank you 🙂 It’s very hard to write freely, when you are a self-conscious type. And watchfulness and caution make for careful, but uninspired prose..
LikeLike
Oh, I have just returned from Edinburgh and I am completely in love with the city.
Too bad I missed the opportunity to save some books!!
LikeLike
It’s a beautiful place, isn’t it? I am completely sure there’ll be more opportunities to save books. Seize them (but be gentle with the books!) 🙂
LikeLike
Nice to read a little about Edinburgh, as my ancestors came from nearby, while I am so far away, but like your writing style and thoughts as well…
LikeLike
Thanks! Glad I reminded you of a piece of your family’s past 🙂
LikeLike
I love the clever playfulness of your title, but followed the entire piece like a child gathering bread crumbs; marveling at each discovery wondering all the while about the ending. Lovely!
LikeLike
Aw, thanks so much – that means an awful lot to me! I love the description of the child gathering breadcrumbs. I just hope I took you to the gingerbread house in the end 🙂
LikeLike
Oh my, this was just really well written! The Virginia Woolf quote totally resonates. If we could but capture with words every sentiment, every brush of wind. every sound, taste, and feel of just one day … well, my we would never do the living. And that, I think, is our simultaneous problem and wonder of social media!
LikeLike
Thank you so much, SimplySage! I’m really glad the quote meant something to you. The moment I read it, it struck a chord.. as if something I had been unable to express was suddenly articulated.. by a woman a hundred years ago. Remarkable!
LikeLike
Hi Kate,
With an awesome blog like this and pictures I think you will not be an Irish-German mongrel, young and poor for long! Love your style!
LikeLike
Hey Segmation,
Lovely to have you here. And, well, one out of two isn’t bad 🙂 Thanks for coming by!
LikeLike
Ha Ha. Thanks for your comment! http://www.segmation.com
LikeLike
Awesome post! Loved it. I was walking next to you through Edinburgh and agonizing about the book store closing. Now I want a copy of Wolfe’s book.
LikeLike
So glad you enjoyed it, Hans! I’d advise you to dash out to your local second-hand bookshop and grab yourself a copy. It’s a wonderful read.
LikeLike
Enchanting. This beloved books will always remind you of your travels and your travels of your books. Thank you for rescuing these 6 from the shredder.
LikeLike
That’s true – I’ll always have them to remind me of the few days I spent there 🙂 I wish I could have saved more but I hope others did the honours. Thanks for stopping by here!
LikeLike
Love your descriptions. Books being shredded? Baah! Ran into a similar situation here, but more massive, free, and more greed exhibited (by me). A state library was being closed, one that was pretty much for state legislators to use. We know they don’t read. More than half of the library was being given away. I only had an hour between errands. But what a collection was quickly created! Your story is the best!
LikeLike
Delighted you salvaged so many books and even garnered a collection! Best greed ever. Really glad you enjoyed the post 🙂
LikeLike
There’s just something about a book that you have to love. Even the tatty, battered old ones that you find at the book swap in train stations. I’m sorry, but I’ll always prefer reading a good old fashioned paper book to something that I can download.
LikeLike
I completely agree. The Internet is only almost omnipotent. But it can’t yet recall the smell of a musty book, the wonder at a quaint inscription of bygone years, and personalised dog ears. And I hope it never will…
LikeLike
I actually collect old books. There’s just something special about reading a book and being able to tell where the last reader stopped or was interrupted. The folded pages, the inscriptions. Old books come with not one tale, but two if you look hard enough.
LikeLike
so true! Books are such lovely, comforting things to collect.
LikeLike
I always prefer reading paper books, although I just bought a nook recently it is nice to read newspapers, magazines, and articles online with a tablet. I think most people who love to read would buy both. The tablets are great for traveling, but to build up your home book collection, it’s always nice to finish something and put it on your shelf. It’s still a difficult concept to grasp that all physical media might be on the “cloud” someday.
LikeLike
That’s true! I really do wonder where we’ll be with it all in ten years time.. One thing is for sure. I would never have built up a collection of posts like this on paper. So there is something to be said for the technology too..
LikeLike
Congrats on being Freshly Pressed!
A fellow lover of Woolf and Edinburgh and bookshops, I really enjoyed this.
LikeLike
Thanks so much, Caitlin. I was very happy to stumble upon you when you were freshly pressed a long time ago! I’ve been a regular reader and admirer of your writing ever since. 🙂
LikeLike
Freshly Pressed! Happy days. I really like the way you write. Can’t believe they were going to recycle unsold books – or was this a ploy to get you to buy? Surely they could have brought the leftover ones to a charity shop or something similar?
LikeLike
It was a lovely surprise 🙂 Thanks so much for your kind words! I did overhear them considering the possibility of donating them to other charity shops as well, but I suppose with so many, they just wanted to clear the space fast. It was a really special shop. And it’s taught me to make a conscious effort to support more shops like it.
LikeLike
I got Freshly Pressed a few weeks ago; it’s encouraging to get a bit of recognition, eh? You can read my super-short stories about Belfast at http://vernacularisms.com – they might appeal to your Irish side 😉
LikeLike
It is indeed! Congrats to you too 🙂 I enjoyed your story and it was lovely to see the word “wee” again: it’s a good wee word!
LikeLike
Wonderful imagery! Freshly Pressed worthy!
LikeLike
Thank you so very much 🙂
LikeLike
Congrats on being Freshly Pressed! I imagine Virginia Woolf would have had a blast on Twitter. There must be a fake account somewhere. The independent and used bookstores are closing down in Toronto too. Very sad, really.
LikeLike
Thanks! hehe, she would have wreaked havoc 🙂 And she’d have given Bieber a run for his money too. It is sad. And it’s up to readers like us to support them. I know I don’t do it enough..
LikeLike
I find it sad that a lot of local and charming little book shops are going under. We still have an amazing one where I live and I’m in there every week! Unfortunately, with Eason’s setting up in every Irish town and city the smaller businesses don’t stand a chance! Very well written piece by the way!
LikeLike
It’s really sad. It was awful seeing Hughes and Hughes of Dundrum close down a few weeks ago too. The physical book is something that we’ll probably only learn to grieve when we’re robbed of the ability to choose it.
LikeLike
What a wonderful post. I love the way the piece draws the reader in, starting with the city and its literary place-names to the shop to the book itself. Thanks for writing!
LikeLike
And thanks even more for reading! I am really glad you liked it 🙂
LikeLike
What a lovely post – kudos on saving books!! I love Edinburgh and I love books! Nothing beats the feeling of a crisp new book – which is why I will NEVER switch to a Kindle / online reading portals! I love my books too much!
Thanks for this – I loved Edinburgh and it’s probably the best place a sentimental bibliophile like you and me! 😀
LikeLike
Edinburgh and books is a match made in heaven 🙂 Paper is so precious. This says it all really! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiwe5oQHxiE
LikeLike
It’s so sad that that lovely little bookshop had to close! That happens all too often in this world nowadays… What lovely titles you chose. I love the classics. And your talk of an absent-minded professor naming the streets–wonderful. I haven’t been to England in years but want to go. Wonderful post.
LikeLike
It’s very sad.. That’s why we all need to go out and buy books. I don’t do it nearly enough but I intend on reforming! Thanks so much for stopping by 🙂
LikeLike
It was my pleasure!
LikeLike
Thank you for the wonderful Woolf quotation. She’s my favourite author by a mile. I so often think of quotations from Mrs Dalloway as I go about my daily life(; Kerry; this moment in April). I’m going to have to get my hands on The Common Reader…
LikeLike
Do! It’s the perfect book for an enthusiastic reader! It’s so interesting to find out what Woolf thought of the works she was reading..
LikeLike
Pingback: From Tolstoy to Twitter | Giuseppe Savaia
What a delight to find you and the best of recent Freshly Pressed, if I may say. From compelling title (seriously!) to delicious Woolf quote, inspired. Thank you!
LikeLike
You may and I am delighted to hear it! I am very, very happy you enjoyed the post 🙂
LikeLike
A Wonderful post. Love that Woolf quote.
LikeLike
Thanks! I love it too 🙂
LikeLike
A really nice post on ‘free flow of writing.’
LikeLike
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it 🙂
LikeLike
Lovely blog! I volunteer at Virginia Woolf’s home in Sussex and love this quotation of hers…
LikeLike
Oh, what a lovely thing to do! I bet it’s full of stories.. Thanks for visiting 🙂
LikeLike
Dear Kate Sqaured,
How you write and your tone is how I dream of my words sounding. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
LikeLike
Dear Sarahwritescreativethingshere,
That’s a lovely thing to say. Thank you very much. I’m going to visit your blog now. But I bet your words have a lovely sound and tone of their own. Looking forward to reading 🙂
LikeLike
That is an absolutely beautiful piece of writing! I am moved by it! Thank you so much for sharing it with all of us! Congratulations on being ‘Freshly Pressed’! Have a great day Kate!!
LikeLike
Aw, thanks so much Jeff! very kind of you, I am so glad you enjoyed it 🙂
LikeLike
this is the greatest. so glad to find someone that loves lit as much as me online!! 🙂
LikeLike
Aw there are lots of lit-lovers around here! Thanks for stopping by 🙂
LikeLike
Ever since Border’s closed in the US, I’ve been deprived of my favorite childhood bookstores. So whenever books are saved, I’m happy! 🙂
LikeLike
Me too! Sad about Border’s.. 😦 I hope you have a lovely cosy bookshop in your area to keep you stocked up!
LikeLike
Beautifully written. Reading that makes me want to write better!
LikeLike
Thank you so much. I am so glad you enjoyed it 🙂
LikeLike
Books can save a life and a Life can save some books. Saved some myself today in one of those sales that threatens worse than recycling – dumping books!
LikeLike
I really think that’s true. You just need to find the right one. SO glad you saved those books 🙂
LikeLike
I love your article
LikeLike
Thanks Julia!
LikeLike
Love the Austen references. You’re lucky to feel like Lizzy Bennet…. I feel like Marianne Dashwood or sometimes, Fanny Price. 😉
LikeLike
Ha! Maybe I’m just a wannabe Lizzy, which would actually make me more of a Kitty!!! 🙂
LikeLike
Reblogged this on pS_look up in the sky and you will find…..
LikeLike
What a lovely article. And I love that last line by Virginia Woolf. I find that I did to write best is when I’m most emotional. Whatever makes me ‘feel’ is what makes me write.
LikeLike
Thanks! I have the same experience. I think the best writing I’ve ever done has been in diaries which I’ll never show anyone! There’s a lot to be said for those raw emotions, though I think contentment lends prose a pleasing clarity too 🙂
LikeLike
I envy you for the loot but you stand exonerated by quoting one of my favourite authors. Yes, she has pretty much summed it up for the posterity, both in prospect and retrospect. It is a pleasure to have discovered your blog. Thank you, Mr WordPress -you are a classic already!
LikeLike
I won’t deny I’ve an enviable loot but I am so glad you enjoyed the post! It’s lovely to have you here 🙂
LikeLike
love edinburgh..your description of it; your writing has a new feel..
you got lucky to get some of the books..pity they were considering recycling them.
congratulations on being freshly pressed.
LikeLike
Delightfully written from the title to the ending. Thank you. Thank you for letting us peek inside your semi-transparent envelope. It was lovely there, just as I remember being snug in my over-sized anorak as a child. I haven’t heard the term anorak since childhood either. I do love the blogosphere and the words that tag the writer to their place of habitation. We have puffy jackets and parkers in Australia, much to my mother’s regret these words became our vocabulary when she left the north of England to raise us in Sydney.
LikeLike
Thank you for this lovely piece of writing! So hopeful. Must go read some Woolf…
LikeLike
Pingback: From Tolstoy to Twitter to Tomato | williskoo
loved it … and absolutely true …
loved the part stating “..if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style..”
getting over desire for acceptance is a path towards salvation …
i believe, no one can bind a man but his own fears of abandoning the well directed comfort zone … when i write, and re read my work, i don’t understand that where did those words come from.
There are a lot of things i surely wanna do and i don’t just because i am too busy pretending that i am good at the things i surely don’t want to do … and its a tragic reality…
LikeLike
Tolstoy to twitter – sums up your broad range and reach:-) It mirrors your influences. It links the past and the present (continuous!) and especially for me, being a lover of both the T’s it caught my attention and gave me just the cozy mood to read. And I loved the banner photograph at the top. Perfect for a writer of today and it inspires. Thank you.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Oyia Brown.
LikeLike