Bookcrossing

[bakunin_the_cat]

I hate to deprive Cancer Research, but there is another way. It's called UK and Ireland Bookswap, and it's a yahoo! group I set up, where you can list books you don't want to keep. If someone's sees a book they want, they contact you and you send it them (and pay the postage). No money changes hands. Hopefully if you take out as much as you put in, it will end up balancing itself out, and you get great books for nothing!

So simple and stupid you'd think everybody would be doing this.

[bakunin_the_cat]

Just thought someone might be interested. If anyone's in London town, tomorrow evening, and would like to spend a couple of hours drinking beer and talking books then there will be a bookcrossing Meetup in the Cittie of Yorke Pub, High Holborn (next to Chancery Lane Underground - Central Line) from 7pm, tomorrow. As the name suggests, it's also an opportunity to bring some books along, and get some others in return.

If you're up for it, just come along to the pub. We tend to congregate downstairs in the fridge, or Cellar as it's officially known, though if they have a party we'll be upstairs in the main bar. It's not hard to find us either way. The books on the table and the slightly manic appearance of the regulars, tends to give it away!

[amner]

Crikey, I used to drink in the Cittie of Yorke all the time when I worked along Holborn. Very atmospheric pub.
.

[wshaw]

The Cittie of York. Brilliantly strange place with all those whopping great barrels over the bar. I used to work in Clerkenwell and sneak down there after 6.30 when all the lawyers had gone home, leaving the snugs free. It looked like a place where people went to connive.

[amner]

And of course just up the road from there is the Princess Louise where Denis Nielsen picked up a couple of his victims. Oh, and where, on my first day in the smoke, I was told to "F--- Off you Northern C---"

Happy Days.

[bakunin_the_cat]

With such glowing recommendations, how can you resist?

Excuse my ignorance but is Denis Nielsen, Leslie Nielsen's little-known brother? It would make sense to me. One brother gets all the attention as he's a bit of a clown, and people think he's funny, while Denis is constantly admonished, even when he's just doing the same jokes.

'Nice beaver!' he says, pointing out a supreme example of the river-dwelling mammal.

'Go to your room, you wicked child!'

In the dark recesses of his mind, Denis plans his revenge on the world.

[Wavid]

No, Denis' modus operandi was to kill someone, cover himself in talcum powder and say "Come to Grandpa".

[John Self]

I won't be in London until this weekend so I will make a point of visiting the Cittie of Yorke pub after the event to wallow in the knowledge of being the only slightly manic book lover there. I hope and trust that said hostelry has actual factual practically medieval provenance to justify its Olde Worlde Wordes name?

[wshaw]

Harbottle's Pub Guide says: "The name The Cittie Of Yorke was purloined from an older tavern of that name which was situated over the road as part of Staples Inn. No carpets."

(I like the "No carpets", particularly. An essential piece of information for anyone planning a saturday night on the lager).

Apparently though, there was a 14th century pub there, then a 18th century coffee house before the present strange structure.

[bakunin_the_cat]

Also, it sells Hefe-Weizen which for anyone who doesn't know, is really nice German Wheat Bier, and cheap bitter for 1.60. In the provinces, you may still be able to go to the cinema, get a slap-up meal with a bottle of stout, and still have enough change left from a pound to get the tram home but in the Smoke, with a single pint of watery rat-piss approaching three of your English pounds, this is cheap indeed.