It began like this. I went to the shelves on the landing to look for a book I knew was there. It was not. But plenty of others were and among them I noticed at least a dozen I realised I had never read.
I pursued the elusive book through several rooms and did not find it on any of them, but each time I did find at least a dozen, perhaps two dozen, perhaps two hundred, that I had never read.
And then I picked out a book I had read but had forgotten I owned. And another and another. After that came the books I had read, knew I owned and realised that I wanted to read again."
This 'Starting Point' from Susan Hill's "Howards End is on the Landing" reminded me of what happened when I started to put together that eclectic pile of books for my friend's guests library - click here.
As I got into it deeper and deeper - I now have piled up more than five hundred books to be rehomed to Merimbula soon - the same happened to me as had happened to Susan Hill: "I wanted to reposssess my books, to explore what I had accumulated over a lifetime of reading, and to map this house of many volumes. There are enough here to divert, instruct, entertain, amaze, amuse, edify, improve, enrich me for far longer than a year and every one of them desrves to be taken down and dusted off, opened and read. A book which is left on a shelf is a dead thing but it is also a chrysalis, an inanimate object packed with the potential to burst into new life. Wandering through the house that day looking for one elusive book, my eyes were opened to how much of that life was stored here, neglected or ignore."
Actually, I came across "Howards End is on the Landing" via its sequel "Jacob’s Room is Full of Books", which I picked up at the Mogo Bookshop for eight dollars for no better reason than that the new owner is from Cape Town, and we talked about Cape Town and South Africa and South African writers, at the end of which I couldn't leave empty-handed.
Has he a different dressing gown and bow tie for each of his book?
Unless you have read Virginia Woolf's "Jacob's Room", the book's title "Jacob’s Room is Full of Books" doesn't make much sense - in fact, it makes no sense even if you have read Virginia Woolf's book. As for the rest, let the man in his dapper dressing gown and bow tie tell you more.
