Life must be filled up

Hope you don't mind a further comment on collecting? The Fisher book is quite common and easily available on www.abebooks.co.uk I used to help out in my friends' bookshop (they've since retired, so I don't do this any longer) and this book was always readily available. And yes, 84 Charing Cross Road is a firm favourite of mine and is a reading list in itself! Mind you, a lot of Hanff's reading was a little more highbrow than what I normally cope with! But books on and about books are also favourites of mine, autobiogs. of publishers, for instance. I had several but I had to make way for other books and parted with them, sadly. An Occupation for Gentlemen by Fredric Warburg was one of them. As for books on collecting, I would mention the books by Lawrence & Nancy Goldstone (Slightly Chipped and Used and Rare). I also think you might enjoy the Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters (all 6 volumes!) These are the letters of George Lyttelton, father of the late Humph, and publisher Rupert Hart-Davis, father of Adam of TV fame, and journo, Duff. I don't know why these letters of two urbane, erudite English gentlemen appealed to me (written in the 1950s) but they did! Indeed, I found them unputdownable which is something to say for 6 volumes of gentlemanly correspondence! There is also a biog. by Philip Ziegler: Rupert Hart-Davis, Man of Letters.
Margaret Powling