SIGNIFICANT TALES FROM THE BOOK TRADE

In the course of sorting through my books I discovered I actually own a book by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Good lord! It’s called Nature, part of the Penguin Books Great Ideas series and is completely impenetrable (to me at any rate), so I’m going to take it into the shop, in case the man who was looking for him comes back. Where on earth am I going to shelve it though? We do have a nature section but I think it will get lost there. I could put it in philosophy but it will get lost there too, so maybe flat on a table or into essays.

A book comes into the shop which is by someone I know slightly. It’s a 2018 hardback and has a personal dedication in it. Well, someone got rid of this quickly, I think. The dedication, I have to say, is mildly passive aggressive. If someone had written a dedication like that in a book I had bought, I’d have lobbed it in the direction of a charity shop straight away, perhaps via the author’s head. My personal opinion about dedications is this:

1.  Say thank you.
2.  Say I very much hope you enjoy it.
3.  Throw in a lot of love and kisses.

That’s it.  Do not make mildly barbed comments about the person’s character; it’s arrogant and self-defeating. Anyway, I price it (maybe slightly too low), stand the book upright in self-help and wonder if it’ll be there next week.

This reminds me incidentally of a great literary feud between V.S. Naipaul and Paul Theroux which was made worse by Theroux flicking through a rare books catalogue one day and discovering that books he had given to  Naipaul and his first wife with written dedications, were for sale at the princely price of $1500 each. He assumed from that, that their friendship was no longer of any value to Naipaul. It can be a mistake as a writer to equate one’s self with one’s book. I mean what do you say when someone says they don’t like your book – throw a punch? However in this case I would probably have drawn the same conclusion.

I spend some of the day pondering the bookseller’s great philosophical imponderable – how do you shelve a name for example like Victoria Waters-Blake vis à vis Victoria Waters Blake? My personal approach is that Waters-Blake goes in the Ws and Waters Blake goes in the Bs. What do you think? Of course in a shop of many volunteers everyone abides by different rules or like me forgets the rule they are abiding by between one cup of tea and the next. There is also the tricky moment when there is lots of room in the Ws and none in the Bs, so one might veer off the straight and narrow due to laziness or not wishing to bend down – Ws are always at floor level. All I can say to you as a customer is always look in both the Ws and the Bs if you are looking for this sort of author. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for example.

This week we are inundated with Atonements (Ian McEwan). And for some reason they are making me cross. Everywhere I turn there is another one waving at me, falling on my foot: small paperbacks, large paperbacks, hardbacks ones with covers from the film, ones without. Yoo hoo over here. Look at me. What about me? Oh, and you missed me. Go away, I want to shout. In all your different formats, leave me alone. In order to calm down I go over and stroke the Viragos, all lovingly gathered together on a small table. And then I throw some of the grubbier, creased, coffee-stained Atonements out. That’s better.

Mis-shelvings are fun. This week’s winners are Women who Run with the Wolves (psychology /self-help) in Nature, Men are from Mars Women Are from Venus (self help) in fiction, and Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings (fiction/it won the 2015 Booker. The cover has a vinyl record on it) in music.

Incidentally, one of the pluses of sorting out my shelves has been coming across a book called His Arms are Full of Broken Things (1998) by P. B. Parris. It is one my oldest TBRs (to be read). I’ve held onto it for 20 years without reading it. I’ve tried fairly frequently. This time I was determined and you know what it’s fantastic. It’s about Charlotte Mew, a poet, and each chapter begins with one of her poems. They are strange and baffling and I love them. Thomas Hardy fell in love with her but she, although loving him, did not want to sleep with him. She had passionate and possessive platonic relationships with women and, after her father died had his suit and coat cut to fit her. I do love a bit of cross-dressing in my books. I like the idea that this book has been sitting on my shelves for 20 years waiting for me to read it. If you’re out there P. B. Parris I just want you to know how very much I enjoyed your book. Thank you for it. And could you tell me what the tarot reader in St James’ Piccadilly said to you, as mentioned by you in the acknowledgments.

You see this is where I disagree with all the de-clutterers. If you haven’t read it you are not going to, they say. Rubbish. If you have read it you won’t re-read it. More rubbish. If you haven’t worn it in the last year you never will etc etc. Absolute rubbish. This book did not spark joy (obviously) for 20 years but now it has sparked a whole bloody fireworks display of joy.  So, you’re all hideously wrong. And by the way because of the heat wave this summer I’ve worn two skirts I bought about ten years ago and had barely worn. Incidentally, despite this rant I have a great deal of affection for the book by Marie Kondo, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying because it always sells very quickly when we get it in and I always put it out on one of the tables.

In case you think I’m making this stuff up: an elephant, a butterfly and a saint.

This week’s things that fell out of books:

• A few book marks; the most interesting of which is one advertising the world’s strongest chilli with a cartoon of a sneezing elephant.
• A gift receipt from Tiffany’s for the eye watering amount of £285. It’s for a bow brush. No, I didn’t know what it was either. Anyway, it was bought in Zurich Airport 22/08/2012.
• Another saint – this time S. Francesco – Greccio, crying. I have to say I like these saints that keep falling out of the books into my hands. On the back of his picture are the words of a prayer in Italian.
• A small cabbage white butterfly, yellowy white with black dots on its wings.

I have an extremely odd conversation with a customer. It all starts off OK. She tells me she bought a book from the shop in which a woman had put a lovely dedication to her husband. I say something general about dedications and second-hand books and then she’s off. ‘How could he give the book away and not cut out the dedication? She doesn’t deserve him? She should divorce him.’ I’m baffled – does she know them? How does she know the circumstances of the books coming into the shop? The books might have come in because he or she died. And I’ve never thought that someone would cut a dedication out of a book before giving it to charity. I smile slightly and nod and breathe a sigh of relief when she leaves.

I took another 23 books to the shop this week. And this time I managed to get them all there without retrieving one at the last minute. However the following night I wake up with the absolute certainty that one of the books I have donated contains a dedication to me and my partner. I utter up a silent prayer to S. Francesco, Please let it be there next week. Then I can buy it back from the shop. Or at least cut out the dedication.

P.S. I should also probably confess to having bought a book from the shop. It is called: Wait, The Useful Art of Procrastination by Frank Partnoy. And if you’ll pardon the pun, I can’t wait to read it. Once I’ve read it, of course, I will be able to wait before reading it but then I will already have read it so it will obviously be too late. Or maybe I will manage to wait without reading it and will end up reading it in 20 years time.