An heuristic purchase of logic
2 July, 2008
- The current cover
- The previous cover
Yesterday, I visited Matlock Bath with my family. It is the place where my parents honeymooned back in the 1950s before their idealistic world was forever altered by the arrival of a child. After a pleasant meeting with some old friends in a café where they serve exotic coffees in the kind of receptacles normally reserved for afternoon tea, we went to the Oxfam bookshop. ¶ It’s all in Middle English gasped my daughter as she opened a copy of an OUP Chaucer (thus making her father proud, yet pushing her further to the edges of her X-factor watching generation). This was purchased along with a copy of Wilfrid Hodges Logic, a Penguin book. When I skimmed the book later on, I realised that I had purchased a book I already owned, but the original had been a Pelican book: my heuristic, scattergun approach was confused by the new dress and change of badge. I suppose that means I need this/these books more than ever — maybe I’ll read it twice. ¶ This is not the first time I have bought something I already owned.

