Book Parcels

There is something exciting about getting books in the mail. Maybe I feel this way because when my brothers and I spent our boarding school holidays in the small town in India where my parents worked, we had no access to bookstores with books in English, so my mother would occasionally order us books from a large city. What a treat it was when the box bursting with paperback books arrived, and we scrambled to open it and put "first dibs" on the most promising looking volumes. What bounty! Even now, if I have ordered books directly from a publisher, or if a friend mails me a book, I feel an instant lift of spirits at the prospect of opening the package to find a book or books - fresh and new - ready to be devoured!