84 Charring Cross Road, London (A bookstore)

[DATo]

Carla,

Just a note to mention that I finished Letter From New York and enjoyed it very much. I did not think it was as good as Q's Legacy or The Duchess Of Bloomsburry Street, maybe because it was so short, but it was still a very delightful read. I especially enjoyed the description of the birthday party for Duke, the German Shepherd. I also enjoyed her description of the Brownstone apartment house tenants and her interactions with them.

I have never been to New York but her descriptions of various places and events were so vivid that I felt intimately part of what was happening in the book. Also, her descriptions of the way New Yorkers interact with each other was very illuminating. It seemed to describe a different, sometimes even charming cultural ethos that I would never have associated with such a frantically paced city.

I do thank you sincerely for the recommendation. It was wonderful to read another book by Hanff, written in her own inimitable style.

[Carla Hurst-Chandler]

I am glad you enjoyed it.
After reading it...it made me look at NYC in an entirely different light Maybe not live there...but perhap a trip in the future. I've always avoided the city proper like the plague.
Thank YOU and Fran and Maud for opening my eyes to such a delightful writer!

I did receive and finish Q's legacy...and love the way reading Hanff is like following a trail of breadcrumbs...as she always mentions such wonderful books to (also) read as she wanders along

[DATo]

As I wandered through the library this evening on my way back home from work I stumbled, quite by accident, upon the film version of 84 Charing Cross Road. I brought it home and watched it as I ate dinner and as I did so I remembered the wonderful discussion we had here a couple of years ago. I never bump my own threads but I thought I'd bump this one only for the sake of those new arrivals to the forum who may be unaware of this delightful little book.

So here goes ..... {{{{{ BUMP }}}}}

[gali]

I have read this book and loved it. A great book indeed!

Thank you for the great review!

[DATo]

I have read this book and loved it. A great book indeed!

Thank you for the great review! :)

gali, it occurs to me that three years ago I began this thread after just watching the movie then as well. I also picked it up from the same library. I had totally forgotten that. Well, for once the thread (an extensive one at that) is completed BEFORE the recommendation was made *LOL*

[gali]

I have read this book and loved it. A great book indeed!

Thank you for the great review!

gali, it occurs to me that three years ago I began this thread after just watching the movie then as well. I also picked it up from the same library. I had totally forgotten that. Well, for once the thread (an extensive one at that) is completed BEFORE the recommendation was made *LOL*

lol

I didn't watch the movie by the way.

[DATo]

gali - check this out ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WxA856czQY

Now go get the movie *LOL*

The first entry is from the 25th Anniversary edition of '84 Charing Cross Road' - in which Anne Bancroft (who played Helene in the 1986 film of '84') wrote an introduction to the book:


INTRODUCTION

I'm not a writer, but this book and its author mean enough to me that I'm glad to venture a few words in celebration of its new edition.

Like the people who win our hearts, the books we come to love can introduce themselves in the strangest ways. Let me tell you about how I met 84, Charing Cross Road. Some years ago, as I was sitting on the beach on Fire Island, a man strolling by approached me. I didn't know the fellow, so his exclamation - "I've just read something that would be perfect for you!" - took me by surprise.

The next day, as I sat in the same spot, he came my way again, this time with book in hand. His enthusiasm seemed so sincere I couldn't help but be intrigued. So, soon as he was gone, I opened the small volume he had delivered and started to read. That's how my romance with 84, Charing Cross Road began.

As many of you already know - and many more, I hope, are about to find out - it's difficult, if not impossible, to start this book without finishing it. The trail of Helene Hanff's correspondence with Frank Doel and his colleagues at Marks & Co. leads us, captivated, down one woman's idiosyncratic path through English Literature; along the way, our enjoyment in sharing her literary education is deepened by the human narrative her letters weave. This is a book which seems at first to be about other books, which of course it is, but as we get to know Helene, and, through her, Frank and Nora Doel, and Cecily Farr and Megan Wells and the rest at 84 Charing Cross, we recognise that the books desired, located, sent and received are the happy vehicles for much else: conversation, friendship, affection, generosity, wit - in other words, for all the best things life can share with us.

Which brings me to just what it is about this slim book that means so much to me. The more I listened to Helene's distinctive, wry, and winning voice, the more I heard echoes in it of another voice, that of a friend I'd been close to for many years, since, in fact, we'd been students together. Much like Helene, this friend was enchanted by books in a way that animated his every word; what resonated between Helene's voice on the page before me, and my friend's in my memory, was the respect, need, and love for books that characterised their mutual passion. Sadly, at the time the wandering reader of Fire Island delivered 84, Charing Cross Road into my hands, I was mourning the death of this very friend. So all the while Helene was writing to Frank Doel about Pepys and Hazlitt and Stevenson and "Q", her words were really talking to me about this dear friend of mine, giving them a poignancy that only enriched the extraordinary charms they already possessed.

Soon after, knowing of my attachment to this book, my husband did a wonderful thing, pursuing and acquiring the film rights to it and presenting them to me as an anniversary gift. That's how I got to play Helene on the screen, and to meet her in person. If I were a better writer, I'd describe the occasion on which we all met the Queen Mother at a command performance of the movie; the image of Helene democratically offering her hand to royalty remains an indelible memory.

Now, I certainly didn't mean to pass myself off as a reader of the stature of Helene Hanff, nor even the beachcomber who dropped her book into my lap, but it seems to me that my experience with this lovely volume reveals an awful lot about what books provide: a way of reaching out across time and space to friends and strangers, and to the absent presences that play such a large part in all our lives. In the pages that follow you'll recognise Helene reaching out to her beloved English authors and to the many friends in and about 84, Charing Cross that these long-dead writers introduced to her. What you won't recognise is the beachcomber speaking to me, or myself communing with my late friend; but, believe me, there we are, right between the lines.

- ANNE BANCROFT

[Fran]

Tidying up a few books last week I came across my much battered copy of 84 - a treasured possession.
Gali, you should watch the movie just to see how they handled the letters crossing the Atlantic, Ann Bancroft is magnificent too.

@DATo
Well done for bumping the topic

[gali]

Thank you DATo and Fran, I will look for the movie. Thank you for the link, Dato.

[TammyO]

Now I am intrigued by this book, and also this film. I must read this. Thanks.

[DATo]

Now I am intrigued by this book, and also this film. I must read this. Thanks.

Greetings TammyO !

I think you will enjoy this nonfictional book which tells the true story of a woman's obsession with English literature. The book is entirely constructed with letters sent to and from the bookshop over a 20 year period. It is a book FOR book lovers.

As you can see we've spent a lot of time discussing it in the forums in the past. So far we have only one dissenter with regard to the quality of this book. "Book", did I say? It is more of an experience than a book, and the beauty of the "experience" is that it doesn't end with the final chapter of 84 for there is an immediate sequel which was originally bundled with the first book called The Duchess Of Bloomsbury Street. There are several other books which are all tied to the original as well through the common denominator of the principal character, Helene Hanff.

Hope you like it .... but, I already know you will !

-- March 2nd, 2015, 5:14 pm --

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNeq7Dakv_k

Last third of the clip ... wait for it.

[Cas Greenfield]

A favourite book, a favourite film...have never been to the bookstore, but I must share with you another bookshop which is an experience in itself.

In the seaside town of Tenby in Pembrokeshire in Wales there are two bookstores. One is a generic High Street store, with the classic range of books you'll find everywhere, plus pens and erasers and all kinds of ephemera.

But, take a side step from the main street and head for the steep narrow passage leading down to the harbour, pause as it levels out and look back.

You'll see a door and a window piles high with books, the sign above the door reads 'Book Shop'. If you manage to enter the shop without anything falling upon you, you'll be lucky. The narrow space is filled from floor to ceiling with books of every genre. Don't expect them to be cheap, either, just because of the apparent haphazard way they are stacked. A book on Tiffany glass was well over £100 and the Monroe postcards were £3 each.

The last time I was there, in November, a small booklet fell on my head. It was a dance card from a ball held at a high class London hotel. The orchestra and soloists were listed, plus a selection of the hits they would be playing. But it was the date that chilled me.

October 15th, 1949. The actual date of my birthday. Talk about serendipity!

Of course I bought the dance card. A nostalgic snip at £4.

And more importantly, after two decades of visiting Tenby and the store, it is still there and going strong.

I'm not ready to begin sending food parcels just yet - the owner has some of my cash...he'll survive!

So, if you're on your Dylan Thomas pilgimage, be sure to stop off at Tenby and check out the craziest bookstore in Wales.

[Fran]

@Cas Greenfield