Currently Reading...

At the moment I am reading this book from the pile beside my bed.  I think I bought it for £1 at a charity shop and it is proving well worth the money.

 

As is usually the case, any book I read needs to be easy to pick up and put down, as I only tend to read in small spurts of 15-30 minutes when I wake up or before going to sleep.  This book is perfect from that point of view.

 

It is an anthology of shopping as it has featured in literature throughout the ages with exerts from many hundreds of books and letters which have mentioned the subject.  From Jane Austen to Sophie Kinsella it offers you an insight into the shopping habits and thoughts of many famous names and fictional characters over the centuries.  It is quite fascinating in some respects.  It is made up of chapters on Impulse and Indulgence, Shopping Hell, Markets and Pedlars, Filling the Larder, plus many more. 

 

I'm a bit of a sucker for historical detail and particularly liked the story of a pedlar woman living and working in London in the 17th and 18th Century, who sold Mercery, Hoisery and Haberdashery, (silk, silk gloves and silk stockings amongst other things) and who at the age of 83 left over £9,000 to her Quaker friends after her death, which must have been an enormous sum in those days. More than was probably left by many men after a lifetime's toil I suspect. (Taken from Margaret H Spufford's  'The Great Reclothing of Rural England', Hambledon Press, 1984.)

 

Another interesting story was from a book by Justine Picardie, a fashion writer for Vogue, Marie Claire and the Daily Telegraph, who retold the tale told to her by a friend who had had a ghostly experience when trying on an item of Biba clothing in a second hand shop in London. Looking in the mirror, she had seen the reflection a young woman looking back at her.  She didn't buy the item of clothing as you might expect, which she came to believe was worn by a young woman who sadly died of an overdose.  (Taken from My Mother's Wedding Dress, Picador, 2005).

 I do sometimes wonder how some of the things I've bought in charity shops have actually found their way there, but I can't say I've had any such supernatural experiences.

 

 Anyway, I love to shop (as you might have guessed from some of my posts), but sometimes funds just do not allow for it, so reading about it can be the next best thing.   Literary shopping therapy without any expenditure!