I have (rather sadly) spent most of this week in a state of great excitement about the impending publication of the Penguin Little Black Classics – 80 volumes at 80p each to celebrate 80 years of Penguin Classics. There’s a remarkably wide of range of authors represented, including many of my favourites, and so I’ve been keen to get my hands on some!

Penguin-330x330I was also very keen to buy them at a proper bookshop, rather than online, so I popped into my local Waterstones last week to find out if they would be stocking them. They told me they were going to be stocking the whole range – yay! – and when I went in today they’d done a wonderful display on the first floor next to the fiction section – I wish I’d had my camera on me, but anyway, well done Ipswich Waterstones!

I confess I came home with several of them – and I could have happy picked up the lot! – but here are the ones I chose:

black stackAnd here they are, all spread out:

black flat

The top row is Russians (of course!) – Tolstoy, Leskov, Chekhov, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Gogol.

The middle row is English language writers – Conrad, Darwin, Whitman, Wharton and Pepys.

And the bottom row is Japanese/Chinese authors – Basho, Kenko, Shen Fu and Pu Songling.

They’re beautiful little books, worth 80p of anyone’s money – and I suspect more of them might make their way into the Ramblings before too much longer…

As for other weekend purchases – well, I was restrained:

lively

A nice hardback of “A House Unlocked” by Penelope Lively – I’ve read all her children’s books and have several adult ones on Mount TBR – but this was only 50p and sounded fascinating!

So today has been a very happy bookish Saturday! 🙂