Charity Shop Book Haul: More Cheap Books From the Charity Shop That Keeps on Giving

Another day, another charity shop trek to find cheap books.

I ended up at the charity shop that has the special offer of five books for a pound sale.  This is what I bought this time.

1) Pause by Daniella Marchant. How to press pause before life does it for you.  Has a 3.79 rating on Goodreads.

2) The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.  Has a 3.73 rating on Goodreads. I don't really buy all this Law of Attraction stuff, but I thought that given how it cost twenty pence, I would finally read the book. It also has something to do with a pair of boots I found recently.

3) Happy by Derren Brown.  Has a 4.06 rating on Goodreads.  I see a trend here.  Three self-help type books in a row.  Interesting.

4) The Meaning of Sport by Simon Barnes.  Has a 3.78 rating on Goodreads. I like sport, so for 20 pence this was an easy pick.  We will see.

5) A field Full of Butterflies — Memories of a Romany Childhood, by Rosemary Penfold.  Has a 3.67 rating on Goodreads. The lowest Goodreads rating here. Having written a memoir myself, (well, the only book I've written) it is a genre that I like, a real life story. 

So, plenty more to read and all five for a pound.  

The Bestselling Books of 2023 (So Far)

Here are the bestselling print books for the first half of 2023 released by Publishers Weekly.  It does not include audiobooks or e-books. 

Perhaps not surprisingly the top spot is taken by Prince Harry with Spare, 1,179,379 books sold.

Colleen Hoover has seven books in the top 20 with almost four million in sales.

 For the full list, go to Publishers Weekly.

Going For a Walk, and the Satisfaction of Picking Blackberries

I'm fortunate in that there is a local park just across the road from where I live.  It is a country park where you are invited by the local council to walk through woodland, grassland, wildflower meadows and open water. It's home to many varieties of birds, where the ducks, geese, and swans will come and greet you in the expectation that you might feed them. A local canal and river also runs through the park.

 

There is something else about this time of year on the park. It is fantastic for blackberry picking. From around July to the end of August there is a feast to be had, if you like blackberries that is. I do, as a healthy option for breakfast or in a smoothie, and they are free. They are just starting to ripen now, although the full on black ones are still hard to find, every day there are more and more. 

That Friday Feeling… A Journey back in time to 1966, 1968 and 1970

Here are three things that we may never see again.

1) A pay packet with actual money in it (but, in this case, not much money). So low, that they paid no income tax.

2) England winning the World Cup.

The 1966 World Cup, at Wembley Stadium.

By a score of four goals to two. It is a scoreline that every English football fan remembers. Alas, it will never happen again, as West Germany no longer exists. Now, England have to play the whole of Germany.

3) House prices this low (I think this one is a certainty).

There was a time when five grand could buy you a house in Britain. Semi-detached as well, with gardens, front, and back — and a garage.

And they were still being built with a chimney!

But I suppose how low pay was for some — see number one, five grand would have been a lot back then.

These Boots Are Made For Walking... Something Wild and the Law of Attraction — Part two

A few days after I found my “new” walking boots, I was searching my book collection for something to read. I say ‘collection’; it’s not that large, perhaps two to three hundred books. They are the ones that have survived the years. Books that I have read, or am unlikely to read, I often give to charity shops.

Books can take up a lot of space.

When I was a young boy, a neighbour of mine had a large book collection, all in book cases that covered the walls of their house. They could have opened a bookshop. I wondered if I would ever have the same — not a bookshop, but a house with a room or a study with lots of books.

The answer has turned out to be no. The books I have are housed in different places, some on show, some stored away. Truth is, they are often neglected, but just occasionally, I would remember to pick one to read.

This time I settled for one that had been sitting in a pile of books, hidden away for so long they were gathering dust. It was in used condition, probably picked up at a charity shop or a car boot sale. It was a book that I had looked at many times and put down, never quite being in the mood to read it.

It was a book by the author Cheryl Strayed called Wild.

Part memoir and part travel adventure, it tells of her journey to walk the Pacific Coast Trail. I thought, It’s about time I read this, or at least a few chapters, to see if it is worth reading. I enjoy reading books by people who have faced a major challenge in life and done something different. The risk of adventure, taking a chance, the not knowing of what will happen next, and the trust that you have to believe that everything will turn out alright.

I settled down to read the book.

It begins with a prologue, something that you don’t see that often in books these days. A few pages long, but it stood out straight away. A prologue is written with the intention of telling part of the story that pulls the reader in.

A cliffhanger, so to speak.

Wild recalls a story of how she loses one of her walking boots over a cliff edge. In frustration, she then throws the other one away. The Pacific Coast walk is a long one, and with both boots gone, you are drawn into the story to see how she coped walking barefoot, or did she? I would have to read on to find out.

A cliffhanger in more ways than one.

But as I read the prologue, I also realised that of all the books I could have selected to read, I had picked one that, in the first pages, writes of a lost pair of boots.

Having just found a pair of walking boots that looked like they had been thrown away, I couldn’t help but think how strange life can be.

 

 

Edited and updated, June 2026.