Green Apple Books on Clement Street in San Francisco had been recommended to me as one of the finest bookshops it would ever be my pleasure to visit. As it happened, I was staying five minutes’ walk away, so I availed myself of a number of opportunities to pop my head in the door. They sell both new and used books, and we all know that a splendid selection of reasonably-priced secondhand books is basically what makes life worth living. Here is a list of my purchases, carted back to Blighty to take their places on the tottering bookshelves at Haemoglobin Towers. In no particular order:

H L Mencken : Disturber Of The Peace by William Manchester

Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle

The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

The Sinking Of The Odradek Stadium by Harry Mathews

The Case Of The Persevering Maltese : Collected Essays by Harry Mathews

Schnitzler’s Century : The Making Of Middle-Class Culture 1815-1914 by Peter Gay

Treatise On The Gods by H L Mencken

The Sardonic Humour Of Ambrose Bierce edited by George Barkin

Lost Prince : The Unsolved Mystery Of Kaspar Hauser by Jeffrey Masson

Raymond Roussel And The Republic Of Dreams by Mark Ford

Signs Of The Times : Deconstruction And The Fall Of Paul De Man by David Lehman

The Making Of Americans by Getrude Stein