The Shape of a Reading Life

There are books you save from childhood, a few that somehow survive through an untidy life. I was fourteen when I bought The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer. I know because I wrote the date inside.

Our family, after the end of the Argus, read the Sun every day. I bought the Saturday Age for the book reviews. In my reading habits my library borrowings were sliding from children’s books into the adult section. My much-used borrowing number was 54J.

The Shirer was large and bold: black, white and red front dustjacket with twisted cross centre of page. It’s faded now but the top page edges were an elegant purple. I had a Saturday morning job and with weekly lay-by instalments it was mine. The American journalist historian brought me into an adult world and locked in place a narrative framework of what had happened just before I was born. I had no problem believing Adorno (even if I didn’t know who he was) when he said, “There can be no poetry after…