{"id":244,"date":"2011-03-23T01:35:52","date_gmt":"2011-03-23T01:35:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookblog.salticid.com\/?p=244"},"modified":"2011-03-23T01:35:52","modified_gmt":"2011-03-23T01:35:52","slug":"84-charing-cross-road-and-the-duchess-of-bloomsbury-street-helene-hanff-1970-and-1973","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2011\/03\/84-charing-cross-road-and-the-duchess-of-bloomsbury-street-helene-hanff-1970-and-1973\/","title":{"rendered":"<i>84 Charing Cross Road<\/i> and <i>The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street<\/i> &#8211; Helene Hanff, 1970 and 1973"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I think I first read <em>84 Charing Cross Road<\/em> in my grandmother&#8217;s collection- probably not in Reader&#8217;s Digest Condensed form, as most of hers were, because what&#8217;s to condense? And what wasn&#8217;t to love here, for a New Yorker with family connections in London? Plus epistolary novels work particularly well with teens &#8211; the novelty, the shortness, the illusion of intimacy with adults. I still loved it, but I was shocked that Hanff rails against fiction &#8211; all she cares about is biography and history, the dullest of the dull to me at exactly the age I read this. Her deep love of books let me skim right over that, I guess. This time around I saw a lot more of the wheels and cables behind the curtain, but it&#8217;s still masterful and a deserved hit. I still recommend it to people who love <em>The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society<\/em>, which owes 84 a huge debt IMO. The sequel, <em>Duchess of Bloomsbury Street<\/em> (in which Hanff finally makes it to England), is much slighter&#8211;enjoyable but not really special.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think I first read 84 Charing Cross Road in my grandmother&#8217;s collection- probably not in Reader&#8217;s Digest Condensed form, as most of hers were, because what&#8217;s to condense? And what wasn&#8217;t to love here, for a New Yorker with family connections in London? Plus epistolary novels work particularly well with teens &#8211; the novelty, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions\/245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}