Smutty Bits

Zeppo Bakunin dropped round last Thursday, with a credit note from one of our local second hand book-shops. It was the proceeds from a box of books I passed on to him a few months ago, after I did a fairly radical purge of my bookshelves. A lot of stuff went, especially all those old science fiction books that I'd been keeping around because they might provide an interesting re-read one day. Experience shows that when that one day does eventually arrives you find yourself bored shitless by the wooden characterisation. Especially if it's one of those "hard" SF novels with an edifying science lesson in every chapter.

I cashed part of the voucher in on Friday, and came away with a copy of Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male, which I'm reading at the moment. I also found a copy of C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength, the third of his "Dr Ransom trilogy".I read the first two - Out of the Silent Planet and Voyage to Venus - a long time ago, and decided that it was time to finish the series.

The Ransom trilogy is a good deal racier than Lewis' Narnia chronicles; in Out of the Silent Planet and Voyage to Venus Lewis' hero, Dr Ransom, spends a lot of time wandering around in the nude. Of course it's good clean Anglican nudity, with nothing salacious about it.

That Hideous Strength promises to be a lot racier, if this passage from the first page of chapter 1 is anything to go by:

... He was an excellent sleeper. Only one thing ever seemed able to keep him awake after he had gone to bed, and even that did not keep him awake for long.

The proprietor of the bookshop is a friendly bloke, if a little bookish, and said he would give me first chance at any of the works of Sax Rohmer that come into his shop. He's also promised to keep an eye open for W E Johns' little known Biggles in Bondage which I've wanted to get a hold of for quite some time.