soledad penadés

Today I finally managed to go to my old neighbourhood, Notting Hill. First stop, Bayswater. I just went there to do some shopping on a Westbourne Grove shop, but it was closed. Anyway, I took a bus and headed Notting Hill Gate, where my favourite bookshop is. It is a small shop where LOTS of books are piled, but it is not messy at all, excepting the ultrabargain boxes, where you can get books for one pound or even fifty or twenty five pence. That's it, for my dear euro currency users, something like 1.5 euros, 0.75 or 0.38 euros.

Don't think in advance: these books are ok. I don't have a clue about where do they get them - but I presume they might buy the remaining stocks from other sellers and then resell them, at very low prices. Which is good, as I do read quite quickly, and I am now developing the ability to do the same in english.

I already have been there twice. First time I bought one of my favourite books: Dracula, by Bram Stoker. I had read it before, but in Spanish, and I wanted to find out how was it written in its original language. It was very funny to read how Doctor Van Helsing spoke english with a strong Dutch accent, his weird grammatical constructions and so on. It is also very interesting to check every place which is located in London, now that I know almost all these places: Piccadilly Circus, Liverpool Street Station... (apart from the fictional locations, of course). And I also liked to discover some facts about Bram Stoker's life, which influenced him when he wrote his books.

Second time I went, I just spent some minutes around the shop and just took the first book which looked attractive. This time it was The Cybergypsies (here is another non-amazon article about the book), by Indra Sinha. And was quite weird, it was the story about about something that not always we have been aware of: all the people which used modems to create point to point communities and relationships, away from BBS's and similars, on those famous MUD's, everything in a semiautobiographic way. Superfunny parts of the books were the descriptions of the home made tools those early hackers built for their Atari's, which allowed them to fight faster in their text-based online games. So if you weren't were good at typing quickly, you still could code your own cheating tool which would type the fighting commands for you, thus allowing you to earn more points and increase your level in the game.

And I hadn't been there for some months as I had been very busy moving home, as some of you might know (if not, you can read the story as well), but today entered the door again and started looking for something from Arthur C. Clarke. I have read a pair of books from Clarke before, but as in Dracula's case, I wanted to see how was the original writing style. First I started looking for Rendezvous with Rama, one of my favourite sci-fi books, so I could compare and also refresh my memory (as I think last time I re-read the book was five years ago). But couldn't find anything... I was just giving the battle as lost and already had chosen the first book which looked attractive (for just 50p! how cannot a book look attractive?), when I gave a last inspection to the sci-fi area and discovered a Rama II book. Woh! I had been looking for that one years and years in Spain... each time I went to a bookshop they never had it.

So I got it and the other one, whose author and title were completely unknown for me, for £3.50. That's simply great! As I don't need to read what everybody is reading (examples: The Da Vinci Code, Bridget Jones Diary), usually priced at around £18, and love to discover new authors, this bookshop is like a little treasure.

If you go to London, don't forget to visit it!