A Third Way

I binge on booze and book buying. For the latter my dealers were Amazon and AbeBooks.

You already know Abe is a great resource for second hand and out of print books. If you know why it’s called Abe tell me. I think I know why Jeff Bezos chose Amazon; he thought it was an exotic name but he might have reflected it is a long river, a conduit to many people.

Buy on Amazon and sometimes the book is cheaper. Buy on Abe and support small book sellers. It seemed a binary choice. Yesterday’s post was A Fourth Way, today’s is A Third Way. A friend sent me a Christmas present. It arrived beautifully ribbon-wrapped with enviable calligraphy. I do not buy the cheapest – food, wine, haircuts, restaurants, clubs – you get the message. So why should I use Amazon? Just because they are selling Chips Channon’s (unexpurgated) diaries en primeur for £25.59 – proper price £35.00? Hell no, as one of the Milibands once mumbled through a bacon butty.

I will continue to use Abe for out of print editions; a hardback of the original Channon diaries (1967) is listed at £45. Otherwise I am, mostly, using a small bookshop in Barnes that’s hard to get to both because it’s covid-closed and Hammersmith Bridge is closed too.

There were three single-branch, go-to booksellers in London: Hatchards (owned by Waterstones), John Sandoe and Heywood Hill. Hatchards doesn’t really count as it has a shop on the concourse at St Pancras station but I’ve included it because the shop in Piccadilly is so agreeable. Now there’s a fourth.

Venetia Vyvyan worked at Heywood Hill for thirty years. She didn’t do that for the money – it was because she loved her job. Five years ago a small bookshop in Barnes came on the market and she snapped it up. I doubt the bookshop, when it’s open again, makes much money but she has a second string: Venetia Vyvyan Books. Drop Venetia an email and she sources, wraps and sends. If you don’t want gift wrapping she wraps her books in old-fashioned brown paper that can be redeployed to remove wax from clothing or to absorb grease on the surface of soup. My grandmother only went to the kitchen at Barmeath for two purposes: to make Yorkshire pudding and to trail brown paper across the soup on the Esse. If you are not familiar with Esses they are rather ugly, very expensive cookers.

As this is not an advertisement for VV Books I should draw your attention to one defect, although you may consider it an advantage. She runs her business like Ginger and Pickles who you will recall offered unlimited credit to their customers and went broke. It is rare for her to send in a bill and certainly never before the book has been received. She sent a present to a friend in Oregon and I wondered if I should make provision in my Will for her account to be settled. The same friend that introduced me to Venetia Vyvyan by sending me that beautifully wrapped Christmas present.