Bookish
Posted under Books I love
We have books in our house. Stop press! Hold the front page etc etc. Well, there have always been books here…but stacked up in quiet corners and mostly in plastic boxes awaiting book shelves. Said shelves are now up, books are out of the boxes and are on the shelves and I could NOT be more pleased.
Well, that’s a lie. I would be much more pleased if all our books were on the shelves but the house is too small to house more than a teeeny weeny selection of our huge book collection. Ah well, a little of what you fancy does you good and all that. So, until we move again, we are living on reduced rations of books…just our ‘capsule wardrobe’ if you will.
A smidge under 18 months ago we packed up our lives and moved out of London, from a large house to a small one. We knew we’d only have space for a fraction of our book collection, so most went in to storage whist the lucky few came with us. What fascinates me now, seeing the ‘lucky few’ on the shelves, is which books ‘made it’ and which are languishing in storage. All our cookbooks are here (nothing to do with me, that’s MrSpud’s department although strangely most of them are actually mine), dictionaries (why? when did any of us last look at a dictionary), atlases, reference books for birds and flowers, books of poetry and, randomly, a bible, missal and a prayer book. There are books that we thought the boys might like at some point in the next few years, but the rest are Special Books which we thought we’d like to re-read to at least have around us.
All the books that ‘made it’ make sense to me. But what is SCREAMING at me are the ones that aren’t here. Where are my collected Betjemin letters? My Evelyn Waugh? My Mitford sisters collection? All my academic music books? My Barbara Trapido novels? My Penguin classics? A Dance to the Music of Time? The Raj Quartet? My Margaret Atwood? The Alexandria Quartet? My PD James collection? Jeeves & Wooster? Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow? Behind the Scenes at the Museum? Cold Mountain? Louis de Berniere’s stuff? Iris Murdoch for that matter? All my travel writing books…and especially William Darymple (although, phew, City of Djinns is here). My vast collection of entirely useless parenting books….?
And, much more interestingly, what about the rest of them that I can’t even remember now? Should I bin them when they finally see the light of day again, since I’m clearly not missing them?
To add to the ‘niggling’ about the forgotten books I’m now worrying about the 18 boxes of books that we gave away about a year before we moved out of London. We’d run out of room. A wall of bookshelves had to make way for a vast toy cupboard and the books had to go. It was so painful at the time but I couldn’t tell you what we got rid of. Now that’s a worry. Books we kept for years and years and then dumped. What if they miss us?And I might well be missing them if only I knew what they were…
Will this be a lifelong anxiety I wonder? Will there be a constant cycle of buying, keeping and releasing books? I suppose so. I can’t imagine we’ll ever have space to keep all the books we already own plus the drip, drip, drip of new purchases. I’m much better about ‘releasing’ books as I read them these days. Possibly a side effect of 18 months without anywhere to keep them. Plus a realisation that there aren’t enough years in a life to read everything you want to read, never mind re-read with any kind of conviction. So it’s better to read and release as you go, I think. To avoid the pain of those 18 boxes departing all in one go.
MrSpud has a friend who disproves of keeping ANY books. He’ll give you any book he’s read but only if you promise to lend it on, no ‘stashing’ is allowed. I admire this is a kind of minimalism, although it alarms me in equal measure. Surely books have a role beyond the immediate reading thereof? ‘Books Do Furnish a Room’ is one of the 12 novels that form my number 1 ‘desert island’ read (A Dance to the Music of Time)…the title comes from a scene where one of the characters is dispatched to buy books ‘by the yard’ since ‘books do furnish a room’. I think there’s no escaping the decorative nature of books, and surely their simple visual appeal shouldn’t be overlooked?
My books also double as memory boxes. Most of my ‘lifers’ include mementos from the time I first read them: postcards I received, newspaper clippings, programmes from concerts I attended. Actually I do this so infrequently now, a measure perhaps of how little I read compared with the Before Children years. I must start to do this again, as I’ve really enjoyed rediscovering these ‘clippings’ from Days of Yore in the past few days.
Interestingly, arranging the books on the shelves wasn’t the tortuous task it’s been in the past. Until now there has been a definite ‘His’ and ‘Hers’ approach with me and MrSpud painstakingly avoiding the mingling of our book collections. Then, for me at least, there has been a very defined approach to keeping author/genre etc grouped appropriately. Apparently we don’t care any more. We just shoved them on the shelves as they came out of the box, more or less. It’s making for a kind of literary ‘lucky dip’ approach but I think I live with it. More or less….although I’d like to state for the record that I am never EVER going to read the bloody Ring Cycle. Farking faerie nonsense.
Books which I will never, ever part with:
1. Four Letters of Love: Niall Willams
2. As it is in Heaven: Niall Williams
3. Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems
4. Edward Thomas: Selected Poems
5. Writing Home: Alan Bennett
6. Learning to Swim: Clare Chambers
7. City of Djinns: William Darymple
8. The Music of the Spheres: Elizabeth Redfern
9. Someone at a Distance: Dorothy Whipple
10. The Priory: Dorothy Whipple
11. Attention All Shipping: Charlie Connelly
There are others which should be on the list but they are in storage so, clearly, it would be a lie to say I will never be parted from them. Hmmmmm.
Me and books. It’s not black & white, it goes beyond that. It’s complicated…
x
I just finished one of your books, ‘The Road Home’. Quite an enjoyable read, and passed on from Jules. I think I shall pass it on in the spirit of your mate.
Feng Shaun!
I’m not too far from Persephone books where I’m working now and am getting very tempted to wander along there – I blame you entirely for this and MrMe will kill me if I buy any more…
Have you read Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman? She has a wonderful essay about the co-mingling of her books with her husband’s books. A must-read for bookish types.
I LOVE mementoes in books . . . bookmarks, ticket stubs, random notes, letters (the best!).
We have such similar taste in books. One of my best bookish friends loaned me City of Djinns ages ago . . . seeing it here has inspired me to read it!
how lovely that they are cherished…. i don’t have a large collection due to the fact I got rid of all of my books when i moved across the world… then moved a gazzillion times when i got here… and hubby dare I admit it .. is not a book man!!!! i know!!!!!
i do love to lend and borrow books and we have a great collection at the local second hand store… books are like money you have to keep it moving. :)
Books (plural!) of poetry on your shelves?? I must say I didn’t expect that. But then again who wouldn’t love Pablo Neruda.
Reading your list of books made me realise how much literature we’re drawn to is determined by the culture in which we grow up. Other than some obvious overlaps – I also love Darymple and Dorothy Whipple – I have quite a lot of German and Polish books on my shelves (for obvious reasons) but also quite a lot of French and Latin American books. That’s what “we” read and talk about in Central Europe, I guess.
And I don’t understand the whole movement of books idea, books are one thing I have trouble parting with although they really are taking over all spaces in my tiny flat. There are now two substantial piles on the piano and that’s not a good place for book storage. I need more shelves too…
That’s an interesting comment, Polly–we also have quite a few non-British/American books on our shelves, primarily French and Latin American, as you mentioned, but also Russian. In Southeast Europe Russians are (still) big :)
I am still dreaming about having a wall entirely dedicated to bookshelves…
another fan of books here – i just love having them around me, especially the ones that hold memories of where i was when i read them, and who i was when i read them.
your top three books are part of my rarely-changing “travelling library”. every time i have moved house in recent years, i’ve made sure i have my collection of essential books so that i can feel a little bit at home. i add in a (small) Norman MacCaig poetry book, Pride and Prejudice and Glenn David Gold and that gets me through the upheavals.
Have to say, since buying this house and being able to get all of my books out of storage and onto the shelves did not give me much of an opportunity to weed out the unwanted volumes. i missed them all, even the ones i forgot, and am now having to double stack on the bookshelves. one day, i’ll find a house big enough to house the book collection. maybe ;-)
(also, just wanted to say that i love your blog! you have such a warm and enthusiastic way of writing that it is a joy to read.)
Oh, Spud. I loved this post.
We are very lucky as we have two of our living room walls that are entirely bookshelves. Another wall is a fireplace and two windows. There is no fourth wall as it is an open plan home. Sigh. We are very lucky, indeed. Obviously, we don’t do well with passing along books. Nearly every book we purchased gets “stashed.” I love it. In fact, we have books in every room in our house as well as two classroom libraries at school. (I teach second grade and Jeffrey teaches high school English.) Plus, he’s the librarian at his high school, so we technically have another 5,000 volume library at our disposal. Your post was such fun to read and reminded me what a lucky reader I am.
I also loved it because your must have books are all new to me. All. How can that be?? I’m delighted to have so many new authors to discover. Thanks.
Ah, books and partners, Jon cannot believe how many books I have! There is no risk of ours mixing because he only has Design books, I’ll never understand people who don’t keep their favourite books. Rereading is a luxury but sometimes just opening a loved book and reading a page or a note in the margin is enough, and it makes it worth keeping it.
When we went to South America I shipped all my books to be stored at my parents’ house where most of them still are. I spent ridiculous amount of money but could not bear parting with them. I even had to pay twice courtesy of Parcel Force (don’t even get me started!)
that story sounds so very familiar! we had to get rid of sooo many books before our move to ireland. after ten years we probably have more than ever again! and i am learning to release too but more for dust reasons than for space reasons… novels i imagine somebody would like i can just give away. but i love the look of bookshelves everywhere. we have even book piles in the bathroom.
ps your pics of the megaboys in the poppies are extraordinary!!!!
[...] Spud we find Bookish, a lovely musing on books that could never be parted with – now living in a house with less shelf space, Spud has had to make the difficult decision [...]