Second-hand Book Shopping

Hello lovelies,

Gosh has it been a week already?

I've had a bit of bad luck with second-hand book shopping this week. First it started with a trip to the University Bookshop here in Dunedin where I was under the assumption all their sale books were $1.00. I assumed wrong. Turns out all the books about parenting, diets, natural handmade makeup and meditation were all $1.00, but if you wanted anything substantial then you were looking at $15.00 or more.

So then on Friday I decided to do a google search of the second-hand bookshops in Dunedin and it came back with quite a few, some of them I had already visited. One was called Octagon Books and in 2009 it was named one of the top 10 bookshops in the world! So I was like, how come I have never heard of it before? And I manged to find an address, went round and low and behold the place had shut down ages ago.

Not to worry, on to the next shop down near the oval. That place was essentially stocked with Mills and Boon novels so I left pretty quickly. Then I decided to head out to North Dunedin and visit a second-hand bookshop in the Gardens mall which had a website and quite good feedback. So, turns out that place it shut down too!

But what came out of all this was a goal. A goal to hire or buy a camper van and travel the whole of New Zealand visiting every second-hand bookshop possible. And I'll blog about it the whole way and eventually I'd like to turn it into a novel. It is quite a long-term goal, but one none the less.

Do you have any fantastic second-hand bookshops in your town?

My first book haul!

Ahhhhh so excited! Welcome to my first book haul post. These will be quite often I can assure you, I am forever walking into second hand bookshops and leaving with at least one book.

Yesterday I went along to the Mosgiel book sale and picked up five novels and three children's books. I collect first edition Enid Blyton books so I was very happy to stumble upon a first edition, albeit without the dust cover, of Good Work Secret Seven. I also picked up Tales After Tea but it was the 1970 impression.

Lately I have been studying Janet Frame at university so I was thrilled to nab her part one autobiography: To the Is-land, so now I am hunting for part two and three. I have found them online but I think it is much more exciting to trail through bookshelves and see if I can find it.

I found the second Bridget Jones book too. I have seen both films and I have read the first and third book, I loved how different the book is to the movie and I enjoyed the book more than the film too.

My husband passed me the Bryce Courtenay book Matthew Flinder's Cat purely because it had a cat on the cover so I popped it into my book bag. I hope it is good, have you read it?

I also bought two guilty pleasure books which I know will be fun and light-hearted to read. One is called The Woman on the Bus by Pauline McLynn and the other is called Elegance by Kathleen Tessaro.

I can't wait till university is over and I can just chill out in the summer sun with all my books!

Are you on Goodreads? Join me HERE

J.C Lemon xx

The first 'Do Want' moment

This will be the first of many Do Want moments in this blog. This morning I stumbled upon some amazing bookish artwork! It is artist and illustrator Jane Mount who paints portraits of people through the spines of their books.

"Want your very own Ideal Bookshelf? The books that changed your life, that defined who you are, that you read again and again! Record who you are at this particular time in your life, like getting a tattoo but less painful."

Her business is IDEAL BOOKSHELF and she does custom prints of full bookshelves or just single book spines in a gorgeous frame.

Thank you to brainpickings.org for the article and photos.

I think this is an amazing idea and I am thinking of getting one of the single prints for a book that changed my life - The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton.

What books would you have in your Ideal Bookshelf?

Booksale Alert!

Good evening lovelies,

I thought I would just let you all know that there is a second hand book sale going on at the Mosgiel Bowling Club in Mosgiel on Friday 4pm - 9pm, Saturday 9am - 5pm and Sunday 9am - 1pm. This is a great chance to get your hands on some awesome books and all the proceeds go towards the St Johns Ambulance.

I will be heading there on Saturday afternoon and I will be sure to do a great post for you all of what great books I picked up while I was there.

Hope you'll head along too!

J.C Lemon xx

Katherine Mansfield's Birthplace

Hello lovelies,

Recently I took a trip to Wellington and decided to visit the birthplace of Katherine Mansfield. She is a favourite writer of mine and I have taken a particular shining to her story The Garden Party as well as The Dolls House and Miss Brill which left me in tears.

Today I thought I would share with you some of the photos I took while I was touring the home and I highly recommend that if you are ever in Wellington, you must go and visit.

This here is the original manuscript for The Garden Party. Seeing this actually blew my mind. To be able to see her own handwriting, writing out the lines of one of my favourite short stories. I was so excited to be able to read the first line: "And after all, the weather was ideal."

 

 

And this photo is of the house that The Garden Party is based on. I had always had my own vision of what the house looked like and I was thrilled to see that my thoughts were actually very close to the real house.

 

Here is the lovely Katherine Mansfield, taken in 1916. The text below says "Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people."

They also had the original manuscript for The Dolls House too. There was another photo in the living room which was of Katherine's grandmother and in the background you can see the dolls house. It was amazing to know that the dolls house, and the little Kelvey girls really did exist.

A lovely photo of Katherine, John and Richard all together.

 

And finally, here is the house where Katherine Mansfield was born. It is a lovely home and I am so pleased that it has been looked after and that we are able to go and visit and look at all the photos and read the manuscripts and wander around a house that she has also been in. I did feel very lucky.

If you are a fan of Katherine Mansfield and you are in Wellington at some point, you must visit.

J.C Lemon xx

Musings about word choice in songs

Good afternoon lovelies,

There has been something that has been bugging me for a little while, and that is the over use of the repetition of single words in a song. It's a little thing to be bugged about, but it drives me bonkers when I hear a song on the radio and it's lyrics are on repeat.

For example, Taylor Swifts new song has a mass amount of repetition in it. The chorus alone goes a little something like this:

'Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
Shake it off, shake it off
Heart-breakers gonna break, break, break, break, break
And the fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake
Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off

I can't begin to tell you how tedious it is to even type all that out but it doesn't end there. Katy Perry, whom I love and am going to her concert in December, also does it a wee bit in her new song This Is How We Do by repeating the word 'do' in the following line: "This is how we do, do, do, do, do"

But the one song that really grinds my goat and I have to switch it off is Boom Clap by Charli XCX because of the line: "and the beat goes on, and on, and on, and on, and." Good God I can't stand it! It just sounds like there were no other words to come up with so why not just repeat 'on and on', and then to make it worse, it does sound like she is going on and on and on and on and on and on and on for ever.

It's something so small, but it drive me a little crazy when I hear these songs, and others who do the same thing, come on the radio because I feel like they are a bit of a cop out. I feel like I'm being insulted as a music listener and they perhaps assume that my brain is so narrow and slow that I couldn't possibly handle more lyrics. In a nut shell, these songs make me feel stupid when I hear them.

What do you think? Are you bothered about this like I am? I'm going to take a wild guess and figure that I'm probably the only one :)

J.C Lemon xx

Word of the day - Quaffable

Good afternoon lovelies,

Now, I don't drink wine at all, but I was passing through the wine department at the supermarket and this little bottle with its tag caught my eye:

 

Do you see what it says there? That this wine is "effortlessly quaffable." Quaffable is certainly a word that I had not heard used with wine, nor a word that I had heard of ever. 

Quaffable...what does that mean? So of course, I googled. And quaffable means, essentially, to drink something in large gulps. So this wine can be gulped down apparently, because it is just so damn delicious. 

But I think quaffable could be better used elsewhere, as typically one sips wine and does not, well, quaff it?

So my hot chocolate is rather quaffable, and even more quaffable when my husband makes it because hot drinks always taste way better when made by someone else. 

My favorite drink is Lemon Lime and Bitters, which I quaffed down (that does not sound right) at dinner last night.

So your challenge this week is to use the word quaffable in a sentence! Or better yet, comment below with your funny sentence using the word quaffable.

Cheerio 

J.C Lemon xx