Why Even In Downtown Penarth Raymond Chandler Can Lead Me To Downtown LA. Plus Books Bought Today

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

For my good deed of the day I went to Penarth to help someone who was going to be taking a special eyesight test at Specsavers. I won't go into detail of the medical stuff because that's personal. But eyedrops were required so that person couldn't drive afterwards, Which is where I came in.

So whilst the person went for the test. I had time on my hands. Time for a book to read which is this.

Raymond Chandler - The Long Goodbye

It's certainly funny that it was only last year I've read a Raymond Chandler novel purely because there's so many books and so little time and yet now I'm on my second (not including that tribute book of Philip Marlowe short stories by writers in the nineteen eighties).

So being framed (all around me cheapest at £69) I just quietly did not make a spectacle of myself. I just read.

And I was transported to the heat of Los Angeles of 1953. I was walking down those mean streets. Being confronted by the LAPD. A world where drinking and smoking were commonplace. As of course is murder.

And I was there.

And that my friends is art of a great writer. Takes you to a world where you are not. A world far away from the cold, wet grey morning in Penarth on a Wdnesday in late May and yet you don't notice. My body was in Penarth specsavers, but my mind was in the West Coast of a country I've never been too.

Of course I won't chat about the book properly until I've finished reading it. But you can tell I'm a Chandler fan. And it's taken fifty four years of my life to realise it.

Well good news whilst I won't go into details my passenger's eyesight test went well. So subsequently we went to the local bookshop in the town Griffin books. For any town to have a small independent bookshop which survives and isn't named Waterstones is something to be treasured.

I can't say I've regularly bought books here. Simply because living in an apartment there isn't any room. But as we're about to move into our new home after two years of searching I will be visiting more. And decided to buy at least one book. As it happened I bought two.

The main one was:

Ursula Martin - One Woman Walks Wales

The title basically explains the book. Except that she took on this challenge after being diagnosed with cancer (from which she's now thankfully in remission from). She is at this moment doing the same thing across Europe. Something which won't be easy post Brexit.

And I get why she did it. I would like to undertake the same sort of idea too if I was diagnosed with something similar. One last challenge before whatever disease it turned out to be took hold.

The other book was:

Brian Aldiss - Three Types Of Solitude

This is a pocket book series celebrating ninety years of the Faber publishing house. Regular readers will know that I'm a fan of Mr Aldiss and whilst the book of his short stories of the fifties wasn't really that good his short stories from the sixties and seventies that I have read are really top drawer. So given these stories were written in 2001 I'm expecting good things.

Finally. Could not resist a bookmark. They are getting to be a dying breed.

Don't forget the bookmark

All in all. A good day to be a reader.

Until the next time.