Finding books

There's going to be a whole slew of reviews coming soon, as I have half written a load of them. However, today I am engaged in tidying the living room and have just come across two bags under a pile of letters, one from Waterstones and one paper bag from a second hand shop, both of which had been put down when entering the house and quickly forgotten.
Opening them was like opening presents, as I had completely forgotten what I bought. It turned out to be the Mitfords' letters, Letters between six sisters, which I've read a lot of good things about, a Dennis Wheatley (Unholy Crusade), and a book called The Mysteries of Britain by Lewis Spence which makes claims about the esoteric past of this island, druid cults etc. Not sure I'll swallow most of it but it looked interesting.

Here they are with a little help from one of my rapidly growing kittens, and another recent purchase which I'm very pleased with: a box of adventure books, old tales from early last century published by Hodder. They are designed to look the pulp fiction part, even down to the advertisements in the back.
I read the excellent Edgar Wallace volume, The Feathered Serpent, last weekend, and it was the inclusion of one of his books that made me buy the set. I have mentioned before my penchant for hard-bitten thrillers of the early twentieth century and Wallace is another writer who, like Dennis Wheatley, was prolific but now seem quite hard to get hold of. It was great fun and I have high hopes for the others.
I must admit to being slightly worried about Zane Grey, Westerns are not my thing, but I'll try anything once. And you never know I might find a new niche to explore.

Vampires exist!

Trust me, they really do and I have been battling them for the past month. I'm not talking about dark cloaks and fangs in the neck though, and before you call the men in white coats I haven't spent the past month sitting in graveyards at midnight with garlic and a wooden stake thinking I'm a teenager called Buffy.
No, the sort of vampire I'm talking about are those people that suck the life out of you. Have a think, you'll know them too - people who seem to drain your energy whenever you have dealings with them. Psychic vampires is what they are, and they all seem to have been flocking around me recently like I'm Jonathan Harker and Count Dracula has just rung the dinner gong.
They are subtle, not aggressive, but they know where your weak spots are and how to make their quiet little demands and complaints in a special way that will gnaw away at your brain leaving you tired, confused and fretful. Sometimes they can be very nice people, which makes it difficult to fight them off, but dealing with them is so draining. I have returned home every day from work limp and feeble and collapsed into my armchair with barely strength to pick up my kittens and absolutely nothing left for literature - either reading it or attempting to write it.
This weekend, however, I decided 'no more!', and got out the literary equivalent of a bottle of holy water, a bit of P G Wodehouse, and it has worked a treat; I feel more energetic and able to deal with life once more.
I surrounded myself with the protection of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves just like Van Helsing in his circle of communion wafers, working my way through the Jeeves Omnibus number one. Thank you Jeeves was quickly dispatched and I am now half way through The Code of the Woosters. It is marvellous stuff, and Omnibus number 2 will be following sharply on the tail of number 1 - with 3, 4 and 5 to be ordered pretty quickly, as I think I need a real overdose. Expect blog posts in the near future to begin 'What ho!' - it gets under your skin.
It is also welcome light relief from Mr Aleister Crowley; I am half-way through the biography of him, and it has been slow work, partly because of the aforementioned vampire issue, but also because, fascinating though he is, the Beast is not someone you want to spend too much time with. His personality is rather overpowering, even through the printed page, and I need to take him in small doses - a feeling that appears to have been shared by most people who knew him!
The second part of my cure for the vampire problem is the prospect of a bit of homeopathy - treating like with like. First I bought the Hammer Horror collection, 21 films from that wonderful studio, and of course it has a couple of Dracula films in the set, with Christopher Lee as the Count. Then I booked off October 31st - or Halloween as some know it - and plan to spend the day soaking in vampires, hopefully topped off by a few of the local cherubs knocking on the door dressed as creatures of the night and demanding sweets. The prospect of this has also perked me up no end and given me the strength to (metaphorically) plunge a stake into the hearts of these energy thiefs.