I must
confess that my bookshelves are rather a jumbled mess. Over the years, I
have made half-hearted attempts to categorise them in alphabetical
order, colour, genre, etc. but they never stay that way for long. I think
the books must get up in the night, have a bit of a party and then collapse in
an exhausted muddle when day breaks; it's the only reasonable
explanation I can think of. I can't truly be cross with them for this because
it's exactly how I like them and it's the way they will stay.
The bookshelves reflect
me. They reflect my inability to maintain a tidy home despite my continued
desperate efforts, and they reflect my reading habits and my tastes in
literature. On my shelves, contemporary YA snuggles down with
the Brontës, and with travel guides and books on raising children and William
Wordsworth and Sylvia Plath.
The shelves are currently
enjoying a bit of a rejuvenation.I flirted with the Kindle for a few years but
I have found that I retain less memory of books when I can’t hold a physical
copy in my hands. I forget the title, I forget the author, I forget what happened
in the story in a way I never do with hard copies. And so, I have gone back to
my first love: real books, with real pages you can lose yourself in.
I rarely re-read
books – there are just too many wonderful new ones to read- but I do like to go
in and peruse the shelves, then pull one out and flick though its pages again.
Because of this, I find it very hard to get rid of books when there’s no space
left to store the new ones I buy and I am forced to have a reluctant clear out.
What ones are the
most special? There are two. The first is this one: The Complete Works of Shakespeare, which was my Granny’s. She was
given it when she was a girl by her older sister, and she gave it to me when I
went to read English at university. She
died nearly six years ago now, so she never got to see me become a published author.
I think she’d be proud though, and I know she’d show off about it.
The second book of
sentimental value is Shadow the Sheep Dog,
by Enid Blyton. This was my Dad’s copy when he was a boy, and it was always his
favourite book. Both my parents read it to me when I was young and I’ve tried to
read it to my own children twice now, but it’s never the same as my nostalgia
wants it to be. The physical ways in which dogs were trained on Blyton’s farm of
the 1930s was very different to the ways modern dog trainers advocate and there
are lot other tricky points in the book which my own morals and sense of
political correctness find hard to overlook. Still, I love the way it feels
when I hold it in my hands, and the way the pages are so soft now.
Finally, I have
recently made space for some new books, all on a shelf of their own. My publishers
arranged for me to go and watch the first editions of Show Stopper come off the press and the printers, CPI Limited, gave
me a wonderful goody bag to take home. I have copies of the book in its various
stages of production, and personalised, dated copies for me and both of my
sons. These are so special and they take pride of place on the shelf, along with
the very first proofs of the book. Every time I look at them all nestling there
(and it is rather a lot) it makes me go all warm and tingly. My own book on my
own book shelves: it really is a dream come true.
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