Making Plans for a Return to Hay-on-Wye & A Book “Overhaul”

Somehow it’s been nearly 3.5 years since our last trip to Hay-on-Wye, the Book Town of Wales (I wrote about that April 2017 visit here). This coming weekend will be our seventh trip to Hay, one of our favorite places. We’ve booked an Airbnb in nearby English hamlet Cusop Dingle for two nights, so it’s a pretty short break, but longer than the weekend away we managed last month – reduced to only 36 hours by the cat’s poorly timed but ultimately minor one-day illness.

I’ve acquired many, many books from the free mall bookshop over the past year. (It’s now closed permanently, alas.) And I had no shortage of additional incomers during lockdown, via the unofficial Little Free Library I started and orders I placed with independent bookstores and publishers. So you could say I don’t need a book-buying trip to Hay. But 1) it’s never a question of need, is it? and 2) We want to continue to support the town, which will have been hit hard by temporary closures and by its annual literary festival being purely online this year.

I have no particular plans for what to buy this time, so will just see what takes my fancy. There are noticeably fewer bookshops than when we first started visiting Hay in 2004, but among the dozen or so remaining are some truly excellent shops like Addyman Books, the Hay Cinema Bookshop, and Booth’s Bookshop. Our best bargains last time were from the Oxfam charity shop and the honesty shelves around the castle, so those will likely be our first ports of call, and from there we’ll let whimsy be our guide. Saturday and Monday will be for wandering the town and book shopping, while Sunday will include countryside walks around Hay Bluff. We also hope to explore some eatery options we’ve not tried before.

 

An Overhaul of Last Trip’s Book Purchases

Simon of Stuck in a Book runs a regular blog feature he calls “The Overhaul,” where he revisits a book haul from some time ago and takes stock of what he’s read, what he still owns, etc. (here’s the most recent one). With his permission, I’m borrowing the title and format to look back at what I bought in Hay last time.

Date of haul: April 2017

Location: Hay-on-Wye

Number of books bought: 18

 

Had already read: (3/18)

• How to Age by Anne Karpf
• From Heaven Lake by Vikram Seth
• Tamara Drewe by Posy Simmonds – It’s on my shelf for rereading.

 

Have read since then: (5/18)

• Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge [resold]
• Fillets of Plaice by Gerald Durrell
• A Student of Weather by Elizabeth Hay (!)
• The Dead Beat by Marilyn Johnson
• Cats in May by Doreen Tovey

 

BUT also read from my hubby’s pile (not pictured):

• Sold for a Farthing by Clare Kipps
• All the Presidents’ Pastries by Roland Mesnier
• Second Nature by Michael Pollan
• A Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks

 

DNFed: (3/18)

• Life & Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee [resold]
• We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates – Might try this one again another time.
• Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott [given away]

 

Resold unread: (1/18)

• Family and Friends by Anita Brookner – I’d added it to the Oxfam pile to make up a 5 for £1 stack, but then didn’t enjoy Booker winner Hotel du Lac enough to try another by Brookner.

 

Total still unread: 6

Total no longer owned: 4

 

This is not too bad a showing overall, though it does reveal my habit of buying books and letting them sit around for years unread. (Surely I’m not alone in this?!)

The six purchases still to read are two cat-themed anthologies for reading piecemeal, plus these four – two fiction and two non-:

• Talking to the Dead by Helen Dunmore
• Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller
• Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres
• A Year in Green Tea and Tuk-Tuks by Rory Spowers

To force myself to get to them, these are the four I’ve packed for reading in the car and while in Hay. I’m also bringing, to read on location: 1) On the Red Hill by Mike Parker, a Wainwright Prize-shortlisted memoir about life in the Welsh countryside (I’m about 40 pages into it already); and 2) Sixpence House, which I’ve read several times before and consider among my absolute favorite books; it’s Paul Collins’s memoir about finding a temporary home and work among the bookshops of Hay.

I’ll be back on Tuesday with this year’s book haul plus photos and notes on how we found the town this time around. (But first, Six Degrees of Separation will post on Saturday while I’m away.)