Just secreted a paperback copy of my novel in the little free library on
Cambria Road SE5, which is the nearest one to where I live in Herne Hill (SE24). I'm not sure the library's been there that long. But maybe I just didn't notice it before - it certainly wasn't there in 2018, which is when Google seem to have done their last StreetView survey of the area.
For anyone looking for it, it's on the left just before you enter the underpass below the railway bridge that crosses the road (this is if you're heading north on Cambria Road, having entered it from the end nearest to
Ruskin Park i.e. south of the railway line).
It also doesn't seem to have been registered with the official
little free library website - or with this
map of London bookswaps maintained by the Londonist (although I have emailed them and they're hoping to add it). I doubt that being featured on this blog is going to result in lots more visitors, but who knows.
Current contents mostly thrillers but there was also a Murakami (
The Wind Up Bird Chronicle), a Richard Ford (
The Lay of the Land), a couple of Spanish language texts and a book which I might now go back and borrow, because having looked it up, it sounded like it might be interesting -
The Quark and the Jaguar by Murray Gell-Mann (which appears to be about theoretical physics).
UPDATE 20.8.2021 - looked in on the library about a week after taking the photo above and was surprised to see quite a high turnover of books - the Murray Gell-Mann book had gone (I was too late!) and so had the others I mentioned, including the copy of my novel that I'd deposited there. But there were quite a few new additions too (it looked like someone had had a bit of a clear-out). I had rather assumed that as the library is a bit out of the way, it would take a while before books got taken/borrowed and new books appeared - but maybe I had underestimated the level of interest from passers-by.The Cambrian Explosion installation
It also happens to be right next to the "Cambrian Explosion" art installation which forms part of the railway underpass and is pictured above. It may look a bit unprepossessing in my photo but some of the mosaics/sculptures are worth a look and it probably has London's most unusual-looking "closed to traffic" bollards. You can read more about it and see some rather better pictures of it
here.
Welcome to my blog, "Publishing Waste" which will either (a) chronicle my heroic efforts to self-publish my own fiction; or (b) demonstrate beyond a scintilla of doubt the utter futility of (a). And along the way, I will also be doing some reviews of other people's books and occasionally blogging about other stuff.
