Thanks Jane. I’ve read everything by Swift since the wonderful Waterland - particularly meaningful for me as I grew up in the Cambridgeshire fens - I was amazed to find that Swift didn’t, as he captured the feel of the place so well.
I thought about the Coe when the brexit furore was at its height - and recently found it in a translation, which - surprisingly! - isn’t beyond my level of French (odd I know for an Englishman to read an English novel in French!). I guess it’ll make sense without the rest of the trilogy?
I tend not to read Americans nowadays (don’t ask why - c’est compliqué - I used to teach American literature) - though I have read the Underground Railroad.
I would be interested in the Ondaatje, and possibly some others I don’t know - I’ll look them up and let you know.
But what I’m really looking for is a source like hive.co.uk - a permanet reliable source of any new English book with free or cheap delivery to France.
Well when you find it, let me know. My best so far is my sister…
Just to add, there are hundreds of small Independent booksellers that still use the Amazon Platform.
If you click on their store name this will take you to their seller profile page where you can find their address and contact details.
Many will have their own website/shop online if you want to buy directly from them.
Did you read to the end of that article Tracey? …
Last week, the Guardian reported that Amazon’s chief executive Jeff Bezos had grown his personal fortune by $24bn (£19bn) during the pandemic, to $138bn. Shares in Amazon have reached a record high, with customers spending almost $11,000 a second on its products as its workers protest about their treatment.
Yes…
Also, The British store has some books for sale.
We’ve used them quite a bit, but postage is not free/cheap
There’s always a catch!
Perhaps worth taking a look at Mollat. I’m spoiled because I’m in the Médoc and they’re based in Bordeaux, but the shipping looks reasonable on the few I checked (€0.01 for The Wall by John Lanchester, for example)
Here’s a link to their catalogue of English books: https://www.mollat.com/litterature/litterature-en-version-originale/litterature-anglo-saxonne-en-vo
Looks promising Gareth - thanks.
Isn’t the easiest and cheapest solution to use EPUB books which can be read on any tablet or laptop?
I know that it’s not the same as reading a ‘real’ book, but one quickly adapts.
I still have a couple of hundred of my favourites in paper format, but all the others are in EPUB format (without the dreaded DRM restrictions).
Many years ago I was in a panel discussion at a ‘FutureEverything’ conference (I was the only non-geek there). Somebody asked if we thought ebooks would replace books, and I particularly liked the response of one of my co-panelists. “Well”, he said, “I have central heating in my house, but I still light a real fire nearly every evening”.
I love Mollat, wonderful shop.
Geof, I’m certain that you’re already familiar with there being lots of evidence to suggest that students don’t ingest info as successfully from e-sources as from traditional formats. Nevertheless, this isn’t to wholly discount the value of e-books; when I taught art history at the OU, I’d read the printed course books to digest the material for each new module, but then work with the PDF versions for my actual teaching.
My online purchases are all non-fiction and virtually everything is either s/h review copies or s/h hardback from US public libraries, often for as little as $0.1, so the postage is acceptable.
In addition, US h/b books, particularly from their university presses are usually beautifully bound and printed on far superior paper to their cheap and nasty UK equivalents. My research reading is esoteric minority interest stuff, so most of my purchases have seldom previously left the library.
Lastly, we have a pair of deco mahoghany and cane bergère armchairs, one of which has a broken foot, but precisely maintains its equilibrium courtesy of my wife’s copies of (in ascending order) a thick Bloomsbury book on the portrayal of Cleopatra, Maurois’ biography of Georges Sand and copies of Gide’s ‘Madelaine’ and ‘If It Die’. Not sure how many Kindles one would need to replace them 
I’m with Tory and never now buy any printed books. I used to love them and in my youth spent many hours in Pratley’s book shop in Tunbridge Wells principally looking for first editions of Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books.
But today, apart from a very few reference books, everything I read is digital which, IMHO, makes perfect sense when you live in France. It’s like newspapers. For £5 a month you can access all editions of The Times and interact with all their puzzles. Even if I were in the UK I’d hardly ever buy a newspaper or magazine again.
There are big differences though between different kinds of reading.
I subscribe to The Guardian online for 3 reasons: (1) I’m in France but still like a UK newspaper (although I read it for analysis not news - I get the latter mainly from France 24); (2) the reader comments - often better than the actual journalism; and (3) the links, which can take you directly to sources of research, etc.
The latter point applies to reference books - which for this reason, and the need for updating, I would indeed see going entirely online.
However, none of the above really apply either to literature or to lengthy analytical works, and it’s with these that the converse advantages of printed books are for me decisive - things such as reading outside, when wet, writing marginalia (some of mine going back over 40 years), memorability (as Mark has pointed out), etc.
Hi, I’m a French person living in Kent. I read in French and English and usually sell the books I’ve finished on www.priceminister.com, Pseudo ‘Sophielondon’. I send them to France or the UK for the same amount as my account is registered as if I live in France.
There’s a mixture of fiction, non-fiction, languages, history, biographies, music bio, etc and CDs.
You could try the English bookshop in St Sevrin