Agnete Friis's Blog: The Book in the Suitcase - Posts Tagged "foyles"
Foyled Again
I just learned that a “Meet the Author’s” event is being planned for Agnete and myself in January when the UK version of The Boy in the Suitcase will launch. This caused no end of heart fluttering, maidenly blushes and 51-year-old exuberance here at the Little Water-Mill I Call Home. Let me see if I can explain why.
Back in the 80′s when I was a little less 51-year-old and ebooks hadn’t been invented – forsooth, I jest not, the INTERNET had not even been invented – Foyles was the cathedral of my Charing Cross pilgrimage whenever I could sneak off to London. Though possibly that is entirely too lofty a metaphor to use about the sheer book greed that shone in my eyes from the moment I made my way up from the Underground at Tottenham Court Road. More pillage than pilgrimage, I think, as I zigged and zagged my way from bookstore to bookstore, little independents, the big Waterstones, and of course a delicious detour to The Forbidden Planet, which accounted for at lot of the overload on my returning flight. And finally: Foyles.
They still arranged the books by publisher then, making browsing a somewhat erratic experience. I had my favorite authors to keep up with, but I might have to look for them in three or four different places, which prolonged the hoping and the wishing: please, let there be a new one, or that unexpected ecstasy, an old one I hadn’t discovered yet.
They had natty tote bags with “Foyles” on them in which to drag home my haul, and I kept those bags for ages because the mere sight of them caused a flood of cherished memories and hot anticipation. Throughout my life, my relationship with books, and therefore with the people who feed my habit, has been an exceedingly emotional affair.
And now they tell me – or to be precise, they haven’t quite told me yet, I’ve seen it on the INTERNET – that we have an event there. Littl’ ole me and slightly younger and very much taller Agnete. Right there in Foyles, surrounded by people who love books as much as we do. Book Heaven is within reach.
Lene
Back in the 80′s when I was a little less 51-year-old and ebooks hadn’t been invented – forsooth, I jest not, the INTERNET had not even been invented – Foyles was the cathedral of my Charing Cross pilgrimage whenever I could sneak off to London. Though possibly that is entirely too lofty a metaphor to use about the sheer book greed that shone in my eyes from the moment I made my way up from the Underground at Tottenham Court Road. More pillage than pilgrimage, I think, as I zigged and zagged my way from bookstore to bookstore, little independents, the big Waterstones, and of course a delicious detour to The Forbidden Planet, which accounted for at lot of the overload on my returning flight. And finally: Foyles.
They still arranged the books by publisher then, making browsing a somewhat erratic experience. I had my favorite authors to keep up with, but I might have to look for them in three or four different places, which prolonged the hoping and the wishing: please, let there be a new one, or that unexpected ecstasy, an old one I hadn’t discovered yet.
They had natty tote bags with “Foyles” on them in which to drag home my haul, and I kept those bags for ages because the mere sight of them caused a flood of cherished memories and hot anticipation. Throughout my life, my relationship with books, and therefore with the people who feed my habit, has been an exceedingly emotional affair.
And now they tell me – or to be precise, they haven’t quite told me yet, I’ve seen it on the INTERNET – that we have an event there. Littl’ ole me and slightly younger and very much taller Agnete. Right there in Foyles, surrounded by people who love books as much as we do. Book Heaven is within reach.
Lene
The Book in the Suitcase
Kaaberbol & Friis, authors of The Boy in the Suitcase, blog about reading and writing
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