Truly a Reading Life

While shelving books of poetry on my new bookshelves, I came across a copy of a Penguin Classic, The Last Poets of Imperial Rome. I seemed to remember that there was something special about it, and when I opened it, I found this inscription ‘To my dear friend, Chrissie, “Youth’s the season made for joy,” (John Gay), Happy Birthday, the last poets of an old empire from your loyal subject’ and then the name of someone I lost touch with years and years ago. I must have been around nineteen or twenty when he gave me this book.  Did I ever read it? Judging by the pristine spine, probably not. And I won’t be doing much more than dipping into now. But it won’t be one for the charity shop, that’s for sure.

This blog, sadly neglected of late, is called ‘A Reading Life,’ and sorting out out my books and those of my husband, has brought home how very much it has been and still is a reading life. It’s been a sentimental journey, taking them out of their boxes, one by one. They date from every period of my life and include some that belonged to my mother as a girl. They tell the story of my life. There are books from my young days, like The Last Poets of Imperial Rome, with inscriptions by friends and boyfriends. There are the books I gave my husband and books he gave me. Precious memories and though a lot of books have gone to charity shops or in the case of many of Peter’s, to worthy recipients, all these special books will of course be staying. In some books I have written the place and date of purchase, but even when a book doesn’t have an inscription, I can often remember where and when I read it: those Elizabeth Bowen short stories on a holiday to Brittany in the 1980s, Jenny Uglow’s wonderful Life of Mrs Gaskell on my honeymoon …

It is lovely to have them to hand, double-stacked it is true, so there will occasionally be some hunting for concealed volumes, and I need to do some rearranging, but they all out of boxes now: old friends helping to make my new house feel like home. Books do indeed furnish a room.