Help! I’m in dire need of a new murder mystery book to read! I’m craving for the delights of PD James - of the poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh, of gruesome and senseless murder of unlikely victims. I have built quite a collection of Agatha Christie, PD James and Ruth Rendell books over the years, and over the years I have read and re-read all of them a couple of times. I just have a very bad memory where books are concerned so each time is almost like the first time (woah! :D). But I guess I’ve read them once too often, coz I only have to look at the cover and remember every character, the plot and who did it.

So this means I need some ‘new’ supplies! *YAY*

I love old books, those dog-eared ones which has gone through many a households. Old books have a history behind them; who first owned them, whether it was a gift or where it was bought. I’d often wonder where the owners are now, and what they’re doing. I’d also sometimes wonder if they remember even owning the book, and what made them sell it. I particularly love AC book covers from the 1960’s and 1970’s. They’re almost always colourfully illustrated with the artiste’s impression of the book’s protagonists dressed in fashionable clothes of the day. Books from the 1970’s usually have a ‘reinterpretation’ of that art nouveau look about them, very mod-ish. I sometimes buy a book I already own, simply because it came in a different cover, particularly AC ones. Some of the books she has written are published under different titles. Well, in fact, I’d buy any old AC books!

My favourite place to hunt for AC books is at a second-hand book market in Penang, a place called Chowrasta. I’ve found quite a fair bit of gems there, there are those which dates back from the early 1960’s. Nope, no first editions, but I have a few in hardbacks (these were surprisingly from Oxfordshire County Library! I can only imagine the borrower must have come to Malaysia for a holiday and forgot to bring it back!). Whenever I’m abroad (in UK to be precise), charity shops like Oxfam or Sue Ryder are often a good source, and that’ll be the first thing I’d ask for when I come across one.

It’s been a while since I’ve scoured second-hand book stores for such books (well AC ones, that is). Maybe this weekend, since I’m too broke to go all the way to Penang, I should check out the shops around Petaling Street, or State PJ......Hmm....what a nice way to spend an afternoon, especially if it rains, to be amongst the old musty smell of books, looking under piles and piles of old school textbooks, hundreds of novels, comic books and encyclopedias, some still bound in raffia strings by it’s previous owners, then to discover an old, slightly discoloured, wrinkly yet smooth old copy of an AC book! Aaah….