My daughter gave me Susan Hill's Howards End is on the Landing (Profile Books, 2010 pbk.) for Christmas. I read it over a couple of evenings and was empathetically (?!) inspired by its first four paragraphs:
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 in 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.
I found the book I was looking for in the end, but by then it had become far more than a book. It marked the start of a journey through my own library.
Susan Hill (1942- )
Like Susan Hill, I want real books, printed on paper and bound in board and covered in cloth.
Susan Hill ended her book with The Final Forty - I assume her 'top' books, the most beloved, inspirational, 'important'? There are many I haven't read, let alone own; others which are/would be on my own list; only a few I have read and disliked, one intensely. It led to me compiling my Forty (actually, only thirty-five so far) and I intend to read as many of them again as I can.
Towards the end of the last century, I had a period of collecting Sir Walter Scott's novels in first edition (don't three-deckers take up shelf room!). None cost me over much. I read, with actual enjoyment, several of the less-regarded ones - The Abbot, The Monastery, The Betrothed, The Talisman, The Fortunes of Nigel - as well as Quentin Durward, Ann of Geierstein, Woodstock. Strangely, only Ivanhoe defeated me - I got as far as midway through the first volume. This century, I added The Antiquary and Guy Mannering. Now, I only need the first series of Tales of My Landlord and Waverley (too expensive for me) to complete my set of first editions.
I have just read the first two volumes of Guy Mannering and will commence the final volume this evening. One needs time to savour Scott - preferably with a wee dram of single malt Scotch. I shall report anon on Guy and the other characters.
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