28/02/15: Bande à Part, Birth, Nobody's Perfect (North London Hospice)

North London Hospice, Whetstone. The CDs were £1 each. The Keith Jarrett album (from 1971) sadly has the inside booklet missing. Nouvelle Vague play entertaining easy listening/bossa nova versions of punk and post-punk songs. The Anthony Lane book carries a Martin Amis quote on the cover stating that "Anthony Lane has energy, wit, taste [and] learning". For £1.75 it seemed a bargain – 752 pages of film and book reviews. His review of The Scarlet Letter begins "What is the point of Demi Moore? It's not that I don't get her; I simply can't see what's there for the getting." This looks like an ideal train-journey read. Just need to get a train somewhere.

22/02/15: Casino (Barnardo's)

Barnardo's, Whetstone. After enjoying GoodFellas, I was tempted by this (sort-of) follow-up Scorsese film, but not tempted enough to buy it. Is it worth seeing?

21/02/15: Music books (North London Hospice)

North London Hospice, Whetstone. There were music books on J. Cash, M. Jackson, M. Jagger, V. Morrison and P. Hook's saga of the Hacienda. I already own the two I wanted to read (Morrison, Hook) and was happy to leave the other three.

08/02/15: GoodFellas (North London Hospice)

North London Hospice, Whetstone. “Never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut.” DVD of the Martin Scorsese film from 1990. Saw it on TV many years ago and recall it being quite impressive.

08/02/15: R.E.M. update (Barnardo's)

Barnardo's, Whetstone. There seemed to still be four R.E.M. CDs left (see here). But on closer inspection, Out of Time turned out to include the disc and booklet of The Verve's Urban Hymns. The greens of the spine and artwork match, so you can see how it happened. The mix-up might also explain why this one isn't selling, although it cannot account for the lingering shelf presence of R.E.M.'s other works. Should I tell the staff?

01/02/15: Annie Hall (North London Hospice)

01/02/15: North London Hospice, Whetstone. The Philip K. Dick books were still there (see 23/01/15), and two blokey men were discussing the author’s merits. Then one of them bought a Kurt Vonnegut novel (Cat's Cradle) and they headed off, chatting happily. 

For the remarkable price of 15p I picked up the script book from one of the all-time great films. What a treat it was to relive this again today. My favourite line: “I was thrown out of N.Y.U. in my freshman year for cheating on my metaphysics final... I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me.”

01/02/15: Dead, killers, haunted (North London Hospice)

North London Hospice, North Finchley. The seasoned charity shopper will have become accustomed to the pleasures of certain patterns emerging on the shelf. In some cases, they will deliberately create those patterns. There was something satisfying in the Dawn of the Dead DVDs sitting next to Shaun of the Dead sitting next to Drop Dead Gorgeous sitting next to Natural Born Killers sitting next to The Replacement Killers sitting next to The Haunting in Connecticut sitting next to Most Haunted… Somehow, Justin Bieber has also sneaked in there.

01/02/15: White Ladder (All Aboard)

01/02/15: All Aboard, North Finchley. CD copies of R.E.M.’s Reveal and David Gray’s White Ladder can be found in most charity shops. Many of them have multiple copies. Perhaps I should have bought the CD by The Bangles. No purchase made.