Journal Entry 1 by karendawn from Lafayette, Indiana USA on Friday, February 27, 2004

This charming classic, first published in 1970, brings together twenty years of correspondence between Helene Hanff, a freelance writer living in New York City, and a used-book dealer in London. Through the years, though never meeting and separated both geographically and culturally, they share a winsome, sentimental friendship based on their common love for books. Their relationship, captured so acutely in these letters, is one that will grab your heart and not let go. 

Journal Entry 2 by karendawn from Lafayette, Indiana USA on Sunday, May 02, 2004

This was a fun little book (and such a quick read!). I only wish more letters had been included - you could tell that quite a few were missing. Although I don't read the same books as Hanff, I enjoyed reading what she said about them. The ending was sad.

My favorite part (though I was disappointed that she didn't really read any medieval lit) was this paragraph:
"Is there such a thing as a modern-English version of the Canterbury Tales? I have these guilts about never having read Chaucer but I was talked out of learning Early Anglo-Saxon/- Middle English by a friend who had to take it for her Ph.D. They told her to write an essay in Early Anglo-Saxon on any-subject-of-her-own-choosing. 'Which is all very well,' she said bitterly, 'but the only essay subject you can find enough Early Anglo-Saxon words for is 'How to Slaughter a Thousand Men in a Mead Hall.''" 

Journal Entry 3 by karendawn from Lafayette, Indiana USA on Sunday, May 09, 2004

Journal Entry 4 by karendawn at on Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Released on Tuesday, May 18, 2004 at Mailed to a fellow Bookcrosser in n/a, n/a Controlled Releases.

on its way to dschinny in Germany 

Journal Entry 5 by dschinny from Hamburg, Hamburg Germany on Monday, May 24, 2004

Arrived safely today. Will start reading immediately. 

Journal Entry 6 by dschinny from Hamburg, Hamburg Germany on Thursday, May 27, 2004

A very charming book! karendawn is right, I also wish more letters had been included. In some of the remarks Helene Hanff makes I recognised the pioneer bookcrosser!

Will be travelling to Olifant next week. 

Journal Entry 7 by Olifant from Porthmadog, Wales United Kingdom on Monday, June 07, 2004

Savely arrived in Utrecht! 

Journal Entry 8 by Olifant from Porthmadog, Wales United Kingdom on Tuesday, June 08, 2004

A nice and funny read. What I like:
- it is not only a correspondence between Helene and Frank, by and by you get to know other people like those who work with Frank, his wife Nora and friends of Helen visiting the English bookshop.
- you subtly get a glimpse of history, in between greeting formalities and book requests you read about shortage of meat, Churchill, the coronation.
- her ironical writing, funny, sometimes hilarious. There is a letter in which she scolds Frank for not sending her the books she wants. A whole letter long, only to end the letter, a p.s, with a totally different tone.
- that they never meet in those twenty years

Now, I am going to read The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street...


edit: both books have been sent to xadai in june and seem to have never arrived 

Journal Entry 9 by karendawn from Lafayette, Indiana USA on Saturday, October 23, 2004

Sadly, this bookray is declared DEAD. :( But ms-attitude-ca has just started a bookray for these two books so two of the three remaining participants joined that one. I'm happy that they'll still have a chance to read these two books, but I do hope the two I started show up somewhere at some point in the future.