Bookcases

One of the things I love to do when I first visit a person’s home is to check out their bookcase, because it can offer a wonderful insight into the person’s nature. Appearances can be deceptive, but a book collection gathered over a lifetime reflects some of the things that have interested a person and made them who they are. I compare whether they have similar tastes to mine, whether familiar titles are on the shelves, but I also look for authors outside my experience. 

I have made several discoveries of great writers by poaching someone else’s taste. I also check whether the pages are dog-eared or if the owner uses bookmarks. If so, what kind of thing do they use - perhaps an old envelope, or a carefully crafted marker with ribbon or tassel to keep the place. I check if covers are treated with care, or if pages are creased and spines broken. 

Above all I look to see whether the books are ordered by size or colour, as if they are purely for show or whether they have signs of regular use. Perhaps there is a dictionary or reference book still on the table from being recently consulted, or a novel with a bookmark part-way through and left on a chair. Readers can always find something they have in common and new friendships can be forged through shared experience of a favourite tale. I find most of my real friends are regular readers who like to have books around them.

My Dad

(Rescued from some old files.)

We looked alike, my Dad and me; but I shouldn’t be surprised because the whole family were really similar. Dad’s three brothers and their father. Like peas in a pod they were. Considering they weren’t close they could never deny each other. They were too much alike for that. The whole family was a bit fragmented. Only got together on high days and holidays and then, as the years went by, just weddings and funerals. And lately it was just funerals.

I was only young when my grandad died and I don’t remember much about his funeral.  He was still a relatively young man but he’d had a tough life and it had taken its toll. He lied about his age to get into the army in time for the first world war and got gassed for his trouble.  Not to mention the eye that he lost when a bit of tree flew off near his face as result of a sniper bullet. But it got him out of the war and back home into a reserved occupation. Spent the rest of his working life on the railways like his sons after him. Except my Dad.

There wasn’t much that my Dad took from his family except a love of gardening and a general care for the world around him.  He left home just as soon as he could, almost like his father, he joined up as soon as he was old enough and went off to be a sailor at the end of world war two. He never saw action because he scared everyone that Britain was fighting against, at least that’s what he said.  He reckoned that as soon as anyone found out that he was on his way to fight they gave in. First the Germans then the Japs.  He arrived in Tokyo just in time for the party to celebrate the end of hostilities and sailed into the harbour to the sound of “Land of Hope and Glory” ringing in his ears.  He used to talk about that a lot.

He never really left the navy because almost as soon as he was out he was recruited back to do something I never understood and he didn’t talk about. Something secret. Not that he was a spy or anything, though the kids at school whose dads were just butchers and car mechanics used to think he was, he just wasn’t allowed to talk about it. Something to do with the Cold War.  My Dad must have been at some sort of war for most of his life.

We were always close, my Dad and me. Whatever I was doing he wanted to know and showed an interest and often came with me, fossil hunting or finding animal tracks in the mud or identifying leaves or touring round burial mounds and standing stones. Yes, we were always close and he always said that he enjoyed my education much more than his own and learned a lot more too.

We had the usual troubles as I grew up. The kind of “you’re not wearing a skirt that short” and “can’t you bring home a smarter young man than that” type of stuff but it was always well meant. It was never harsh or cruel, unlike my mother’s criticisms, but constructive and always said with a kind voice.

His voice was always kind, and easy to listen to. He taught me to read by sitting with me and telling me what the words meant in his favourite books. After I went to school and started reading what teachers had given me he would sit at breakfast and ask me about them.  “What are you reading at the moment?  Who is it by?  Are you enjoying it? Why?” I could never avoid his questions.  I was expected to tell him the story so far, in my own words, to show that I had read and understood what I had seen.  If I got it wrong he used to say so and suggest I went back to read it again. I thought he had read every book in the world. He hadn’t, of course. He was just reading the same book after I went to bed so that he was a few pages ahead of me by morning.

It was the same thing every day. “What are you reading? Who is it by? Are you enjoying it?  Why?” So I had to get it right and I quickly developed a talent for being able to read and remember clearly anything in a book.  A useful skill, and one I have never lost. We could always share books as a result.  He could read something and just hand it to me and say “you’ll enjoy that” and he was never wrong. So many of my favourites were first given to me by my Dad.

I can still remember the day that I went home from school and said I’d found this wonderful book and it was about these animals, a mole and a rat and the mole had been spring cleaning and got fed up so he went for a walk and he met the rat and they went up the river for a picnic and there was a boat and sandwiches.  The smile was the only clue that the book was different. “Who is it by? What is it called? Are you enjoying it? Why?” It was the Wind in the Willows of course and destined to become one of my all time favourites; the same as it was one of his.  One of hundreds of good reads that we shared over the years.

So how do I commemorate this wonderful gift that my father gave to me: this love of reading, this need for books? Well, I currently own around two thousand novels and text books, many of which I inherited when he died, several of which I had bought as gifts for him and then received back when he no longer needed them. Poetry, short stories, art, history and tall tales are all included, as is a small part of my Dad, whenever I pick one of them up off the shelf and start to read.