Kaethe

1996 Nov 28
2000 Nov 29

Back when I was a suburban teenager, my access to books was rather different than it is now. There was a Waldenbooks at the local mall with a rather limited selection (mostly bestsellers), a small branch library, a small school library, and paper backs in spinner racks at grocery stores and drug stores. I knew nothing of the NYT Book Review and I rarely read more than the comics and Dear Abby from the local newspaper, so I don't know how much book coverage there might have been. My problem wasn't that my access to books was so limited (although it was compared to today). It was that I had no guidance. Other than [b:Jaws|126232|Jaws|Peter Benchley|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327958767s/126232.jpg|2318370] and [b:Valley of the Dolls|50833|Valley of the Dolls|Jacqueline Susann|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328281855s/50833.jpg|1203845], my classmates weren't making any suggestions, and neither were the adults I came into contact with (although my father reacted to my growing up by buying me progressively younger children's books). Nobody minded that I read all the time, but neither did anyone guide me, so I managed to always have something around to read but I didn't enjoy a lot of it. [Which, come to think of it, was okay. I read a lot of drek, which taught me how to recognize it. And because I was casting about blindly, I never developed any snobbery about genre.:]

Back in those days we subscribed to a lot of magazines at our house. Maybe it was the lure of Reader's Digest millions, maybe it was convenience, maybe it was short attention spans. Regardless, I read Good Housekeeping cover to cover every month, which I loved because they ran a lot of fiction, often an entire novel. All the teen girl's magazines of the day ran a lot of fiction as well, stuff that would now be considered YA. One of those teen girl's mags ran a short blurb about 84, Charing Cross Road. Probably the blurb was shorter than this review is turning out to be. As I recall it was recommended by some other teen girl. A book about a woman choosing and buying and reading books, recommended by someone else who liked to read. It was a revelation, an epiphany, a miracle even.

My love for Hanff's books resides in that recommendation. As it turned out, I didn't like the books that Quiller-Couch had suggested (those that I tried), and Hanff's taste wasn't mine either. But that blurb and that book opened to me the possibility of seeking out suggestions, of creating a reading list of my own, and of sharing my finds with others. It may not be a very good book, I don't know, and couldn't hope to judge. It couldn't have that same effect on anyone with internet access these days when everything is reviewed by everyone. But for me, then, it was a book that changed my life.