Having recently moved out of student housing, I’ve suddenly found myself with a whole house in which to store my things. I always thought I had an impressive book collection, but after having bought three bookcases (expertly assembled by myself and Katie), and somehow acquired a forth, our books were looking a little lost. To fix this problem Katie and I have taken up frequenting Cambridge’s second hand book shops.

I’m quite impressed with the collection we have going. I’ve taken to picking up leather bound books by authors unfamiliar to me.

It makes me really happy to see an inscription inside an old second hand book – like it has a story all of it’s own. I couldn’t resist buying the above book ‘an essay on comedy’ by George Meredith as well as four other books by the same author. The idea that George gave these lovely little books as a gift and they somehow ended up in Oxfam made me feel a bit sad, and while I know that the George in the inscription is not the same George that wrote the books (the latter being long dead by 1926), I still feel better knowing they have a nice bookshelf to sit on again.