Concerning Books

Unlike a great many people, I didn’t get a Kindle for Christmas. Although I will probably get one eventually (very useful and back-preserving when it comes to reading large academic tomes whilst on the go), I find the greyness of the screen a bit depressing-looking, and I really do love the materiality of books. (An aside on that subject – I hope I can get to London beforethis exhibition of illuminated manuscripts finishes, and if I was rich and lived in that part of the world I would love to take this class with Su Blackwell at the V&A. This year my imagination was captured by book art through the magical video promoting Pottermore, and the wonderful sculptures mysteriously donated to various Edinburgh libraries and museums ‘in support of libraries, books, words, ideas’).

I am very much with Giles from Buffy when it comes to books.

So I didn’t get a Kindle. But I was given books, as always, and I bought books whilst I was away, and returned to the perennial problem of how to store them in an organised and accessible way in a tiny flat filled with stuff. And for the last few years I have opted for cramming as many as possible onto the shelves, into vague subject categories not in alphabetical order, keeping the fiction books I haven’t read yet separate from those I have (I tend not to keep fiction I’ve read, unless I’m very sure I’ll want to read it again). But I decided to do away with arbitrary subject categories, other than poetry, fiction and non-fiction (categories problematic in themselves) and keep all my fiction books together. I can see on Goodreads what I have ‘to read’. I also wanted to be able to take books off the shelf without potentially causing an avalanche, which I managed to achieve through the acquisition of a new wee bookcase (from eBay, out of reclaimed wood). Most pleasingly, they are now all in alphabetical order (by author, unless there is no author per se, and thus ordered by title). The achievement of this took six or seven hours, a sore knees and back, not to mention coming into contact with a great deal of dust, but it is worth it. And I like how having all non-fiction together (ok, apart from knitting, recipe and travel books) reflects my diverse interests.

Another plan for life post-thesis was to read The Lord of the Rings. Partly because it's now ten years since I first (and last) read it, and partly to fill the Song of Ice and Fire–shaped hole since I finished A Dance with Dragons. First I read The Hobbit, and I enjoyed it, but not in comparison to The Fellowship of the Ring, that I'm currently at about a quarter of the way through. I'm reading it fairly slowly, partly because I remember that on my last reading I infinitely preferred this first book to the subsequent two. Apart from All Those Bloody Songs, which I'd forgotten about (must have repressed the traumatic memory).

Thankfully I don’t need a Kindle to read and do simple knitting at the same time, as my solid, material, tactile book can be held open for me by my lovely Bookseat, which I got from Amazon Marketplace. It's expensive for a beanbag and a bit of Perspex and elastic, but a great design that is very much worth it.