The Project

Of all the numerous, dangerous substances someone can become addicted to, I should probably be grateful that I’ve become hooked on reading. Actually, that’s not true: I’m addicted to books. That’s not to say that I don’t read them, only that I love everything about books. I like placing them around my house, having them on my desk, in my bags; I love the smell of a new book. There’s something innately satisfying about a pile of various classic texts next to my bed. The TV program Black Books is not only a favourite sitcom of mine, but also a lifestyle choice, of which the drinking and the smoking is an incredibly minor part. As much as I’d love to, I just can’t stop chasing the paper dragon.

The sad part is that my addiction is mainly being supplied by the horrible rise of McBookshops. There are several degrees of awfulness in the scale of soulless page peddlers: Borders, for example, accept their place as, essentially, a book warehouse. Row after row of uniform copies of countless autobiographies by minor celebrities in their late twenties stretch out next to block areas of sporting almanacs and annuals of kids’ TV programs, with just enough space in front of the counter of doom to put several tables. These tables are full of material with titles like A Thousand and One Ways to Lose Weight Whilst Eating Chocolate or Victorian Sexual Morals are Hilarious – the kind of tedious book that friends buy you when they realise you remembered their last birthday, and all rounded off as you leave with at least three magazine racks – a capital offence in my opinion. People who want magazines can sod off to newsagents.

I can stand these bookshops because, as annoying as they are, they don’t pretend to be anything other than an anonymous book machine, where three piece suits can pretend their soul isn’t being systematically ground down because they flick though copies of Andy McNabb whilst muzak idly works its way into their ears, which is generally they best place for them. It keeps them away from me.

The corporate book giants that piss me off the most are the ones who try to look like they’re not omnipresent outlets identical to each and every other town in the world whilst they try to make you feel like they’ve invited you over for a coffee and a quiet read. The fact that you have to pay for both seems to have escaped them somewhat.

We, as a culture, need to make a bigger effort to go to independent bookshops, and I don’t just mean shops that aren’t chains. I mean a shop that is clearly someone’s front room; a shop where the proprietor sits on a chair keeping one eye on a particularly rare volume of nineteenth century Italian poetry as they watch you idly sifting though their books (of which at least half have cover prices in shillings) not to make sure you don’t steal something, but to make sure you don’t bother anything; a shop where, once you’ve decided to buy one item, the owner convinces you to spend another seventy-five pence on something they’re sure you’re going to love (which you, of course, end up doing) out of nothing more than empathy with a fellow book lover.

The thing with these shops is that, unlike food, independent outlets are cheaper and, unlike cars, second-hand books are fundamentally better than new shiny ones: a second hand book has a soul, it has feeling and texture. In fact, the reason I started writing this piece was a ancient copy of a George Orwell novel which had a postcard from Kent dated 1977, a rejection letter from St. John’s College, Cambridge, and a letter to a retired Major General residing in Norwich about his war pension, all of which had presumably been used as book marks at one time or another.

So I urge all readers to reject the world of corporate fast food book dispensers, and seek out as many second-hand bookshops as you can. Your life will be more interesting, your soul will be purer, and you’ll hear much less muzak.

MATTHEW FRANCIS TAYLOR
COMMENT EDITOR