Down at the trashier end of the book market

2 more books acquired today. The first is Tolkien's verse translation of the Volsungsaga, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, the ancient Icelandic/Norse tales. I haven't enjoyed Tolkien's fiction since I was 15, and have reservations about the deliberate archaicism of his Gawain translation. However, he was a professional philologist and linguist, so I thought I'd give this one a go.

Also got a Juliana Hatfield CD. Mmmmm.

The second book is a donation from Sarah, my office-mate, who knows I have a short fuse for quackery. It is Francis Marshall's Living With Spirits, which purports to contain 'authenticated, detailed case studies of actual sightings' and 'disturbing examples of the rich and famous who have been spooked, from Princess Diana to Mick Jagger'. I'm really looking forward to it. There's a 'science' chapter, and one on sexual encounters with ghosts, including that of a man in a Herne Bay pub who had sex with a ghost transvestite!

Here's Cilla Black's intro paragraph, as a taster:

Blind Date TV star Cilla Black was surprise-surprised out of her skin when the spirit of a melancholic teenager first appeared by the side of her bed one night. But there were a lorra lorra visits yet to come.

'I was shaking like a leaf - or a Blind Date virgin'.