The Secret Shame of Bibliophilia
What is the thing with book buying?
K the Tea Drinker and I spend way too much time wandering through second hand bookshops in some weird low intensity buying frenzy.Do we have a copy of this, or that or the other? Do we really need a second dog eared paperback copy of "And Quiet Flows the Don" when we haven't found the time to read the first?
New books or old books it doesn't seem to really matter. Whether it is the smell of an old Penguin Paperback, or the wonderful design of the old Purple and White covers, or the bold design and packaging of the latest Greg Palast Political tract it doesn't seem to matter!
One hell of a run on sentence up there eh?
One of life's great pleasures is to switch off from the world for an hour or two with a book, it can be high brow lit or trash (I have an inordinate fondness for the MASH novels ghost written in the 70's) and a soothing glass of something single malted. Lose yourself in whatever you are reading and detox from the world and you end up looking at things in a better way. But, is that the attraction? I really don't know. Is it the mental image of living in a house with walls lined with books? The reality is more of the "have to live in the garage because the house is full of piles of books" kind of thing. In a similar vein I once knew a guy with the largest collection of Blues records in this hemisphere, what was the attraction?
Is it the opportunity to have access to so much that is great about the human race? Are we seduced by design, packaging and marketing? Go on, admit it, you have stood in a bookshop and looked avariciously at the newly released Penguin Classics! Must have the new 1984, so that it can sit on the shelf next to the other three copies I seem to have acquired along the way. What about the never ending parade of Richard Gordon novels, or the way I keep buying worthy tomes by Politicians that I never get the time to read.
Could the bibliophilia thing, the secret shame, be some outer manifestation of an inner urge to possess one particular thing? God, does that mean I am a collector! Should I buy a nice Cardy and start to cultivate a weird smell? Am I like those odd individuals who collect the Condensors off of light poles, or old bottles,shoes or other bits of human detritus!!
Aaaaahhh!!!!
K the Tea Drinker and I spend way too much time wandering through second hand bookshops in some weird low intensity buying frenzy.Do we have a copy of this, or that or the other? Do we really need a second dog eared paperback copy of "And Quiet Flows the Don" when we haven't found the time to read the first?
New books or old books it doesn't seem to really matter. Whether it is the smell of an old Penguin Paperback, or the wonderful design of the old Purple and White covers, or the bold design and packaging of the latest Greg Palast Political tract it doesn't seem to matter!
One hell of a run on sentence up there eh?
One of life's great pleasures is to switch off from the world for an hour or two with a book, it can be high brow lit or trash (I have an inordinate fondness for the MASH novels ghost written in the 70's) and a soothing glass of something single malted. Lose yourself in whatever you are reading and detox from the world and you end up looking at things in a better way. But, is that the attraction? I really don't know. Is it the mental image of living in a house with walls lined with books? The reality is more of the "have to live in the garage because the house is full of piles of books" kind of thing. In a similar vein I once knew a guy with the largest collection of Blues records in this hemisphere, what was the attraction?
Is it the opportunity to have access to so much that is great about the human race? Are we seduced by design, packaging and marketing? Go on, admit it, you have stood in a bookshop and looked avariciously at the newly released Penguin Classics! Must have the new 1984, so that it can sit on the shelf next to the other three copies I seem to have acquired along the way. What about the never ending parade of Richard Gordon novels, or the way I keep buying worthy tomes by Politicians that I never get the time to read.
Could the bibliophilia thing, the secret shame, be some outer manifestation of an inner urge to possess one particular thing? God, does that mean I am a collector! Should I buy a nice Cardy and start to cultivate a weird smell? Am I like those odd individuals who collect the Condensors off of light poles, or old bottles,shoes or other bits of human detritus!!
Aaaaahhh!!!!
posted by caerdadh at 9:11 am
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