I ask you: you cannot really want to read Sir Philip Sidney?

The image in the book catalogue is but two dimensional, but book buyers require a third dimension in their pictures, so they can see how thick (ie : BIG therefore DIFFICULT) a book is before they commit their lifestyle to owning such a thing, and if you had the same luxury you would see that Sir Philip must have been, as they say, very bored indeed.

Yes: the nights were long back then, without re-runs of ANYTHING. Even so, Philip Sidney managed to fill more pages than were perhaps his due. 

I happily comply with the list, and will continue to browse the shops in patient search ….  when everybody's backs are turned. 

As connoisseurs of the commonplace theft are known to say: you can't let a gift horse loose among the bookshops and not expect it to rabidly fill its trousers and vest with paperback produce.  Such a gift horse has an urge to relaxation, and sometimes only words to will - will do. The inconvenient fact that the constant disestablishment of crime in our community is the main goal of all modern shopkeepers is only made more irksome by a wary public, who are now more than ever keen to catch you at the game.

My pockets are biased in favour of the Penguin paperback, particularly the overpriced variety on the lower shelf, the actual philosophic text from whence our academics rip. Most of these are not to be understood by anybody, and as my example in this vein, I will cite the penguin "Early Christian Lives" a real tail twitcher … a joy to hold and one which I was strikingly willing to read.

For consider : Anthony and the crew … John of Lycopolis …. Athanasius … these are today's men who make me happy.