84, Charing Cross Road (1970)

A series of letters between the author and a London book shop. Endearing, oddly fun, fascinating in its discussion of literature, by the way. Just an hour's read, if that but a nice refreshing drink. ( )

84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff; (5*)

This is a beautiful story of friendship at a time when writing letters was the only form of communication amongst friends and businesses.
Helene is a script writer from New York with a passion for rare books. She is outspoken for a woman of that time and has a very witty sense of humor.
Frank is a book dealer from London. He is rather a proper gentleman who works in a small book shop that specializes in out of print books.
When Helene comes across a catalogue for the store she immediately writes to them with an order.
Frank replies and in his proper British manner begins with 'Dear Madam'.
Helene replies with the remark 'I hope madam does not mean over there what it does here'.
And so begins a beautiful exchange of lives that starts with a shared love of books and over the years develops into so much more.
This is definitely a wonderful read, especially for anyone like myself who loved writing and receiving letters before computers killed off the romance of it all. I highly recommend this one. ( )

Charming story of a friendship between a NYC screenwriter and a London bookseller told in epistolary form from 1949 to 1969. What starts as a simple request for some rare books evolves into a warm friendship. I have wanted to read this book for some time, it was sweet. ( )

Thus reminds me of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and also You’ve Got Mail. I love them both and I really enjoyed this book too.

This is a true story, a correspondence between two people sharing letters. It’s the 1940’s, Helen is in the United States, she writes to a book store in the UK to order a few books. She starts exchanging letters with Fred, who works at the store.

They share a correspondence that lasts for decades.

I thought the very most touching part was Helen sending food to Fred and his coworkers while the UK had food rations. Needless to say how grateful they were.

My only complaint at all is that it’s hard to tell how frequent their letters were. Some letters had huge gaps of time between them, months or years. I couldn’t tell whether there had been letters in between. ( )

Lovely, comforting and happy read. This is easily my happiest books of the last few months. I love letters books, books about books, books that give you the urge to look for other intriguing books. Notes at the bottom of pages are so my jam. A lovely, quick but not fast read. I'll probably come back to it often. ( )