Why I Can’t Stop Buying Books
It’s the fault of all you writers
I hate clutter. I like order. A place for everything, everything in its place. I don’t do knickknacks, ornaments and things that serve no purpose other than to exist; things like — I don’t know, I don’t have any. I’m not into perfume, handbags or jewellery. I like to invest in a good pair of shoes that last a long time. I like a well-cut coat, ditto the shoes. However, books. I can’t get enough of them.
Book Buying as a Reader
I’ve always been a reader, always sought refuge in books, lived in books. When I was a child we had one small bookcase in the living room, mostly filled with my mum’s Jean Plaidy novels.
Mum had a reverence for books and she warned me: ‘When you go to someone else’s house, look around. If there’re no books, get out.’
‘Why Mum?’
Mum pointed to her head. ‘There’s nothing going on up top.’
Behind my bed, Dad fixed a bookshelf. In the evening I asked to go to bed so that I could read. Pocket money and birthday money enabled the exquisite joy of going to a bookshop and buying my own book. At Christmas Mum always put a paperback in my stocking and it was the paperback that was the real magic of Christmas.
