Bad things have happened.

The other night I went to the open-air book cabinet in the park on Poppelsdorfer Allee. This is where Germans leave intellectual-looking books to share – all very bohemian – and I helpfully leave the trashy English novels that I can’t bear to have in my room any more. I’m sure someone enjoys them. Jolly good hamster bedding, if nothing else. Anyway, this was to be my last trip to the cabinet, as I had decided to go cold turkey on reading any fiction in English ever again until I was fluent in German, had passed my A Level and had saved the world.So, I had purged my bedroom of the final traces of my book binges and sidled along to the cabinet after dark to offload my guilt. Maybe I was annoyed because some man (in a mac) was standing in front of the cabinet for ages and ages. Or maybe I was just sick of looking at the spines of books and not understanding a single word. But anyway I sort of blacked out and when I came home I discovered I had picked up two books in English. Foresaken by my own willpower!

Seeing as they were the only two books in English in the cabinet I knew the chances of their both being super-quality titles weren’t good, but even so my heart sank when I saw what I had brought into my newly purified room: Further Chronicles of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery and Fast Courting (“A Classic Novel of Love”) by Barbara Delinksy (pictured).

Readers, I read them.

And things have gone downhill since then. First of all, I actually enjoyed all that hokey Canadian bunkum of L. M. Montgomery, with her Aunt Cynthias and revival meetings and freakin cherry trees everywhere. Worse, I also read all of Fast Courting, in which Nia – tall and shapely with “heavily layered mahogany hair” (not literally mahogany, of course, though it probably felt like that if you touched it; this was in the eighties) – had met Daniel (“fathomless brown eyes”) and was hopelessly trying to resist their mutual attraction, which was so powerful that it left plot and believable dialogue whimpering and broken by the side of love’s highway. Favourite line: “Tall. Virile. Compelling. But he was a basketball star. How could she have done it?” (Actually that’s not my favourite line, but I don’t think the best ones are suitable for a family blog.) Yes, poor Nia had fallen for a basketball coach again – an edgy, devillish, rolling stone type she seemed unable to resist despite their being BAD NEWS. I know the feeling. If I go out with one more paleobotanist…

Well, since then it’s been a pulp fiction free for all. I have discovered a ridiculously entertaining author called Janet Evanovich and I have bought FIVE new books and I’m afraid it is Dick Francis, 1999, all over again. Help me Obi-Wan!

Addictive personality much? (Note how I sneaked the Hitler book in there to make me look slightly intelligent.)

Clearly this can’t go on. I’ve discovered a second-hand bookshop in Cologne where they might take this filth off my hands once I’ve read it (which won’t take long). I think I might keep hold of the Montgomery, though. The book is inscribed “With all best wishes, From Bert, Easter 1927″ and I am not sure Bert would have wanted his gift to have been left out in the cold or flogged all over Germany. Do you know a Bert who would have given Further Chronicles of Avonlea to someone in 1927? COULD YOU in fact be the recipient of Bert’s best wishes? I am sorry that I sometimes blog disrespectively about old people; please get in touch.

nb: I was going to blog about ecological footprints and stuff today but seeing as I am single-handedly doubling Germany’s paper and pulp (ha ha!) consumption I don’t think that would be quite the thing. Also I have a couple of chapters still to read…