Bookshops open again!
At the end of the first lockdown year, the Editorial of Penguin Collector 95 concluded:
with a wafer-thin silver lining about the conservation of the books that we all treasure. One activity that rivalled the virus in its upward trajectory was driven by our being stuck at home. Time on people's hands meant that their overdue sifting of overflowing bookshelves fuelled a steady flow of volumes that they had forgotten they owned, consigned to secondhand bookdealers and charity shops. When at last the routine of life resumes, Penguin collectors, liberated from being limited to ordering online, will swarm to those shops like wasps to an autumn orchard.
The Editor hopes that, the moment now being upon many of us, his forecast is proving true. He has himself found this week one Penguin that did not previously appear on Alec Spencer's website, but does now: series prefix UPS. He hopes to include in Collector 96 some very short pieces on other such serendipities, along with a couple of slightly longer memoirs inspired by life under the virus.
James would be very pleased to receive a short note, just 100 words if that”s all that it takes, reporting good fortunes. His deadline approaches: anything received by 26 April will beat it.
