Currently Reading: 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
This is my second read-through of this small collection of letters between Helene Hanff and the staff at Marks & CO., Booksellers and how their relationships grew through the letters and through the years. Just lovely, and I love how Helene Hanff writes, she's hilariously dry!
Just finished up this delightful, little read this morning titled 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff ❤️ It was a lighthearted break from the darker, more serious stuff I usually read. It's the perfect book for a sunny spring morning. Now, I'm left saddened by the decline in letter writing and I want nothing more than to peruse Helene Hanff's book collection! I'm sure her collection was a marvel based on the books she bought from the charming Mr. Frank Doel of Marks & Co. I definitely recommend for anyone looking for a short, pleasant read. Helene's wit, humor, and generosity is enough to make anyone smile, even that of an old book dealer in London.
It's a shame that with the evolution of the internet, all of our correspondences are via email, text message, or over the phone. I'm a little saddened to know that future museums won't be filled with correspondences from this time, it also leaves you with a physical memento of those we cherish. Imagine pulling out a box from the back of your closet and relishing over old letters, postcards, and notes from everyone you've loved throughout your life--I'm regretful that I'll never experience that. Instead, all I have to relish are k's and lol's from my facebook messenger. Don't get me wrong, the internet has given us so much in regards to accessibility and connection, but there are things we've surely lost along the way.
Poetry in Movies and Television: 84 Charing Cross Road
"84 Charing Cross Road is a 1987 British-American drama film directed by David Jones, and starring Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins, Judi Dench, Mercedes Ruehl, and Jean De Baer. It is produced by Bancroft's husband, Mel Brooks. The screenplay by Hugh Whitemore is based on a play by James Roose-Evans, which itself is an adaptation of the 1970 epistolary memoir of the same name by Helene Hanff — a compilation of letters between Hanff and Frank Doel dating from 1949 to 1968.
The film garnered mainly positive reviews from critics, as well as receiving numerous industry awards and nominations. Bancroft won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her portrayal of Hanff. Additionally, Dench was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and Whitemore for Best Adapted Screenplay. Dench has said that 84 Charing Cross Road is one of her favourite films in which she has appeared. The film has become something of a cult classic among bibliophiles and epistemophiles."
Source
"He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" by W.B. Yeats
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Meditation #17 By John Donne (1623)
"… all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. "
#currentlyreading Helene Hanff’s second memoir to follow the success of 84, Charing Cross Road - it has its interesting moments, but doesn’t quite live up to its predecessors (or my expectations).
I watched the 1987 film 84 Charing Cross Road at like 1 AM last night, in a sleepy haze, and it broke my heart at the end.
Pretty much the whole movie is letters between two people; a bibliophile in the US and a bookshop manager in the UK. They never meet, but there's a wonderful friendship that blooms between them through their correspondence.
I am going to bed. I will have nightmares involving huge monsters in academic robes carrying long bloody butcher knives labeled Excerpt, Selection, Passage, and Abridged.
Book you can’t believe you waited till 2021 to read
This has to go to 84, Charing Cross Road. I've heard about it for years, but never made the effort to seek it out. There was no reason not to! It was short! It was about books! My library had a copy! There was no reason to wait as long as I did, and once I read it I was upset with myself for missing out on years of joy.
Book you read in 2021 and are most likely to reread in 2022?
Probably "The Bruised Princess" by A.G. Marshall or Kate Stradling's The Heir and the Spare or Brine and Bone. The first is a short story fairy tale retelling that's a quick reread, and the two Stradling books are the type of easy-to-read minimal-magic fantasy that I tend to turn to at some point during Lent.
"There’s a building going up across the street, the sign over it says: “One and Two Bedroom Apartments At Rents That Make Sense.” Rents do NOT make sense. And prices do not sit around being reasonable about anything, no matter what it says in the ad[...]"