Just Reading...

There is a delicious escapade in featuring the old and I'm currently reading a secondhand edition of The Minerva Book of Short Stories edited by the late Giles Gordon and David Hughes.
I picked it up just yesterday at the quaint Winding Stair bookshop that faces the scenic Liffey River on Dublin's north-side.

The bookshop really is a treasure trove. It demonstrates enough character to prompt you to purchase the unexpected. A colourful, sudden, reckless buy, if I may put it mildly.

I've had a taste for short stories of late and this collection is carefully compiled by Hughes & Gordon. The latter who was a popular literary agent and also managed the novelist Vikram Seth, made a living with the Richard Curtis agency. This compilation contains shorter works by amongst others Hanif Kureishi, William Trevor, Nadine Gordimer and Salman Rushdie.

Kureishi is described here as a talented newcomer.

I remember that Gordon ran Curtis's branch in Edinburgh and when he died suddenly, the office was closed in his honour. No one was sent to replace him and I think that that was one of the biggest marks of respect any employee could have had.

I'm trying to mix reading the old with the new, although this lifetime will never be enough to accumulate even a fraction of all the delicious reads that abound.

Besides, I'm the kind of reader who must have a book ready before I've finished with a present one. Otherwise, I may have sadly stalled in what would otherwise have been an exciting journey of self-discovery. One of the many, that is.
I've read a few stories in this edition already. They're thoughtful, clever and offer slight twists at the end.