Places For Reading

Still bashing on with my little Collins's edition of Sketches With Boz. In fact, I'm not sure that what I'm now reading technically is the Sketches as I'm into the final section comprising a series of lightweight but entertaining short stories and I've been wondering for a while if these appeared in the original edition or are in mine as padding by Collins. I know from checking in Ackroyd's biography that the stories appeared in various newspapers as apprentice-work from the young Dickens whilst he was still an over-worked reporter in Parliament, amongst other places, but whether they were collected so early in his career I don't know.

One thing's for sure though, I'll always think of this little book in connection with our holiday Down Under. It was the perfect size for fitting into my jacket pocket, which meant it accompanied me almost everywhere, and the fact that it's so easy to read (and put down) meant it was great for reading in places like markets when I zoned out of the shopping experience.

Not that we did too much shopping back then, at least of the anonymous mall variety. It was all little shops and markets, which I find a tad more variable. I have fond memories of the Salamanca Market on our last morning in Hobart, and Victoria Market in Melbourne, where I nearly bought a Clash t-shirt. (Went back to purchase the next day and it was gone.) Oh, and there was a sort of Arts Market in Melbourne at which the girls put odd funky extension-things in their hair.

By a nice coincidence another book I read on the trip, Boey Kim Cheng's latest collection of poems Clear Brightness, has a very accomplished sonnet sequence in it entitled To Markets. Each sonnet focuses on a different market from around the world: nice idea, finely executed. The whole collection is worth a look, several, in fact. I particularly enjoyed reading La Mian in Melbourne on the Little Bourke Street mentioned in its opening line, though ironically the piece has actually more to do with the Singapore Boey came from, and I have come back to.