I’ve done it again – blown my book budget for July. I
swear I am not going to buy any more books until I have read the last five on
my Kindle. But there are so many good books out there that if I miss picking up
this title, now, I may never see it again. I’m sure you understand how that
goes. I let books go and then repurchase them because I miss them and want to
reread them. I could, and probably should use my local library more often, but
I’m a slower reader these days and like to savour the pages rather than charge
through them. Then there are the titles I have let go and cannot remember the
author or the title, and that drives me a little crazy.
I’ve worked in a book store, so understand the glazed
look of clerks when someone outlines a story and expects you to have the author
and title at your fingertips as if you have read every book in the store, or
ever published for that matter. Going into a book store for me is an adventure.
I never know what I will come across. Never mind the title and story, what will
the pages be like to smell or touch?
As Helene Hanff says in 84 Charing Cross Road of
one of the books she received, ‘I’m almost afraid to handle such soft vellum
and heavy cream-coloured pages. Being used to the dead-white paper and stiff
cardboardy covers of American books, I never knew a book could be such a joy to
the touch.’
Like Helene, I still have books that are a joy to
touch. An old, first edition copy Kipling’s Thy Servant a Dog, an
illustrated copy of The Wind in the Willows and Nicolas Bentley’s Tales
from Shakespeare, are just a few that I pull out from time to time not only
to read but to smell and touch.
What is, or are, your favourite books
for their tactile properties as well as their content? Do you have one particular book, or several? So much for those who forecast that physical books would go the way of the dodo with the arrival of ereaders. I like my ereader for the convenience when I travel, but for me there is nothing quite like holding the real thing in my hands.
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