Books in English to buy and borrow

For native English speakers and those with a thirst to learn the world's most popular second language, reading matter in St Petersburg might at first sight seem limited to certain free publications and electronic vodka advertisements on Ploshchad Vosstaniya.

In fact there are several gems waiting to be discovered in an informed search for books to buy and borrow -- more than one corner of this foreign field is forever English.

Liteiny Prospect is a readers' paradise in St Petersburg and among the rows of Russian-language bookshops are a couple of places dedicated to the cause.

Planeta has by far the most extensive selection of new English-language books in the city.

All the best English language course textbooks and dictionaries are there, alongside "Anne Hooper's Ultimate Sex Guide" (169,000 roubles), "Horse Care," "Fighter Aircraft," "Complete Works of Oscar Wilde" (115,900 roubles), some modern fiction and Penguin Classics for a suitably serious 74,000 roubles.

Prices are naturally lower for second-hand prbacks, but even so 15,000 roubles for an Agatha Christie and 38,000 roubles for Gabriela Garcia Marquez is quite an investment in comparison with the prices of new books in Russian.

Probably every whodunit the mistress of murder wrote is available at another shop on Liteiny Prospect called Old Photos, Soviet Art and Books in English.

While the price on her head is roughly the same as in Planeta, thrillers by James Follett and Len Deighton may be picked up for 7,000 roubles. Here all the books are second-hand paperbacks.

In the same courtyard there is an affiliated shop, Books Antiquarian in Liteiny, which deserves a prize for having some of the most obscure and undesirable book titles in existence.

"Industry and Design in the Netherlands 1850/1950," "Who's Who 1984" and "I Unpacked My Grandmother's Trunk" are some of the bargains on offer.

Science-fiction writers John Wyndham and Isaac Asimov command a mere 4,200 roubles here.

The pride of Nevsky Prospect, Dom Knigi, has a foreign languages department where Collins and Cobuild dictionaries can be found along with books on computers, finance, travel and business.

Two paperbacks sold together as a business studies course cost 201,000 roubles. A limited range of Penguin Classics are on offer for 15,000 roubles.

If you'd rather browse than spend money, there are a few libraries in the city center with English-language books on their shelves.

Three of these are together in one building -- the British Council, which has a library exclusively for teachers of English; and the Mayakovsky and Golitsyn libraries, both of which are open to the public.

Most of the books in the Mayakovsky library are well-thumbed, to put it politely, but the biggest advantage of the place is that they can be taken out on loan.

The Golitsyn library has an extremely impressive collection of reference books in immaculate condition which are constantly supplemented by donations.

Weightier tomes include the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" and Sotheby's catalogues, and the library is particularly useful for works on Russian and Soviet history.

The Golitsyn library has a small, pristine reading room which the books never leave, and a maximum of five pages may be photocopied there.

Literally a few steps away from those establishments there is a specialist library for journalists run by an American organization called the Freedom Forum.

Here there are books on news writing and censorship, dictionaries, media directories and back issues of Newsweek, Time, The Economist and the International Herald Tribune.

The bad news in the News Library is that it doesn't loan books out.

If you can't find what you are looking for in any of these places, the English-language book exchange may be able to help.

Who knows what literary gems are hiding in the city's book repositories?

This new venture offers access to the personal collections of St Petersburg residents who have made a list of the books they are willing to loan out.

Anyone who provides a list can join. A brief description of each book would be useful and if you want to put a 50,000 rouble deposit on any particularly valuable book, mark this next to the book title.

BOOKS IN ENGLISH

BOOKSHOPS:
Planeta -- Liteiny Prospect 30. Old Photos, Soviet Art, Books in English
Books Antiquarian on Liteiny -- Liteiny Prospect 61
Dom Knigi -- Nevsky Prospect 28

LIBRARIES:
British Council/Mayakovsky Library/Golitsyn Library -- Fontanka Naberezhnaya, 46.
Freedom Forum News Library (journalists only) -- Nevsky Prospect 70.

ENGLISH-LANGUAGE BOOK EXCHANGE
Contact Sarah Hurst at the St Petersburg Press, 325-60-80.