He therefore assumed that his students-including me-had read Paradise Lost as a matter of course and would understand his analysis of the “Invocation to Light” in book 9. Q was lecturing to young men educated at Eton and Harrow. I hurried home with the first volume and started reading and got to page 3 and hit a snag:

“Just what I need!” I congratulated myself. I went down to the public library one day when I was 17 looking for books on the art of writing, and found five books of lectures which Q had delivered to his students of writing at Cambridge. Q (Quiller-Couch) was all by himself my college education.

“It’s against my principles to buy a book I haven’t read, it’s like buying a dress you haven’t tried on.” The day Hazlitt came he opened to ‘I hate to read new books, and I hollered ‘Comrade!’ to whoever owned it before me.” “I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest.

I often wonder what happened to her personal book collection, and to the NY Public Library books she (according to her letters) filled with margin notes. She really shaped my understanding and experience of Manhattan, and I was stunned to realize, many years later, that at that very time in the mid-90s, Helene was still living in the 72nd St apartment she moved to during 84 Charing Cross Road-just a block from Scott’s first NYC studio! I could have visited her! (Here’s a post all about it: How Radio Helped a Garden Grow.) I carried it all over the city, seeking out the places Helene described. The first one I encountered was her Letter from New York, which I read just before I moved to NYC. I’ve blogged a lot about why I love Helene Hanff’s books so much. Of course the conversation made me want to reread everything, and that’s how I spent yesterday afternoon. 84 Charing Cross Road is one of my favorite books of all time, and Hanff’s other books are way up there too. But the rest of the day is for rest and reading.Įarlier this week I was chatting with Naomi Bulger about our shared love of Helene Hanff. But I know the end is in sight and I’m trying to be good and take it easy. I’m like a phone that won’t hold a charge for long anymore. As I head into the home stretch of radiation (only three treatments to go!!), I’m feeling pretty wiped.

Helene hanff a life