Although I’m a regular user of Surrey Libraries, I’ve yet to contribute to the statistics just announced that show Surrey borrowers to be the most avid readers of EL James’s Fifty Shades of Grey series – which apparently accounts for one in 5 loans – as a libray spokesman commented “they just can’t get enough.” Certainly I’ve noticed over recent months the ‘New Issues’ and ‘Quick choices’ troughs clustered around the front of the library are engorged, full to bursting with these titles and the many, many rip-offs, ‘Seventeen Shades of Purple‘ and the rest. It’s perhaps surprising that ’50 Shades’ was also reported to be the country’s least wanted Christmas present, so there are presumably many virgin copies lying around in homes through the country.
Although I’ve yet to open the covers of any of these titles which seem to be multiplying like rabbits – after all I’m not in any way the target audience – Shades of Grey has been on my own bookshelves – and regularly consulted – for over 20 years. And if anyone got that volume, long out of print, for Christmas they will have been entranced by Oscar Marzaroli‘s picture of Glasgow from 1956-87, published shortly before his death in 1988 (and reprinted twice the following year.) There is a very wide selection of his work on the Marzaroli Collection web site, but unfortunately the images are rather small and seem contrasty and over-sharpened (rather like some pictures I put on the web in the early days of the mid-1990s) and don’t show his work to advantage. The site does seem overdue for a re-vamp.
The book Shades of Grey, second-hand copies of which now seem to sell for £50 or more, wasn’t particularly well printed – bog-standard offset of the period, with poor separation of the darker tones and perhaps in homage to the title lacking a true black – but it does a much better job than the web site, and is a wonderful portrait of a city and its people, complemented by a fine piece of writing ‘Where Greta Garbo Wouldn’t Have Been Alone‘ by William McIlvanney. I’d take issue with the flyleaf description which states that this, “with its subjective impressions perfectly complements the objective images from Marzaroli’s camera” only because his pictures are fortunately an equally subjective view of the city.
