I’VE managed to amass a stockpile of new old books. There’s so much to read here at the moment. I picked up a copy of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, and an edition of Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland with colour plate illustrations by G. W. Backhouse. Mum and Dad added Douglas Stewart’s The Fire On The Snow and Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, along with Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters – to be read together, of course. There’s also Katharine Susannah Prichard’s Coonardoo and a 1925 edition of the Yates Garden Guide, with some keen gardener’s newspaper cuttings and handwritten notes.