Living by the Book

“If the pages are brown, then out it goes,” said the old hippie—I can talk!—op shop volunteer, as he tossed a yellowing, slightly stained hardcover copy of Bryce Courtenay’s Whitethorn into the rubbish bin. I met Bryce Courtenay many years ago and liked him, so I’ve gathered pretty much his entire oeuvre, though I have to admit I’ve yet to read any of it, probably anticipating disappointment. The near-fanatical bibliophile in me still found it hard to walk away from that copy, if only to pass it on to a friend who might appreciate it. Too late now, sadly.

I have that “brown pages” policy to thank for my copy of Russian Nobel Prize winner Mark Aldanov’s short story collection Tenth Symphony and Other Stories (1950). Hardcover of course—I’ve been trying to control my obsession as best I can since I’ve already filled the double-garage-sized room—as it was on the original plans—turned library well beyond capacity with several thousand books as well as journals, magazines and newspapers, the bulk of my vinyl singles, LPs, CDs and DVDs having been consigned as a consequence to the bedrooms of my long-since-moved-out children.

My Aldanov is a first edition, which might prove important to my youngest daughter when she finally inherits all this, but it’s only the content that interests me. The writing is wonderful. He’s not a writer I’d previously known, but there are so many writers I’m yet to discover that I’m just grateful for the local op shop’s decision to toss out whatever doesn’t seem immediately sellable—you know the sort of thing: Dan Brown, Ken Follett (though I have to own up to possessing a copy of The Pillars of the Earth, also unread to date, having been impressed by the tele­vision mini-series), Jane Cornwall, Wilbur Smith, John Grisham (I’m reminded of John Cleese’s character Basil Fawlty railing against the horror that is the books of Harold Robbins!), you know who I mean …

Although I also regularly buy books there, I’ve recovered, free, some remarkable volumes, like a lovely old book titled Bonnie Scotland, featuring prints of paintings by Sutton Palmer and descriptions by A.R. Hope Moncrieff. No idea whether it’s worth anything, but it was first published in 1904, and my edition is the third impression, published in 1912, the year after my father was born, by A. & C. Black—a delightful object, beautifully illustrated, the text gloriously Edwardian.

It’s on the “to read next” pile by my desk. I’m currently reading Sydney R. Jones’s Thames Triumphant, a leisurely jaunt from the source to the estuary of England’s most famous river, illustrated by the author and originally published by The Studio Press in 1943, though my edition is a fourth printing from 1949 and was, according to the note to the original recipient on the inner flyleaf, bought at Harrod’s in November 1950, a mere fifteen months before I was born, just over three miles from that self-same Thames, on the Holloway Road, Islington.

Copiously illustrated with sketches by the author, the book is even more poignant for the fact that the bulk of it combines impressions of places along the Thames and something of their story as Jones had experienced them in the early decades of the twentieth century with an epilogue that revisits those places after the Battle of Britain had been won, noting what had been lost to Hitler’s bombs as his journey brought him closer to the centre of London, “with Wapping church almost gone”. It reminded me of the bombed-out building next to the one in which I spent most of my first ten years of life, the one on the other side of the road long since erased from the map of London evolving from bomb site to open space, where the community built huge bonfires for Guy Fawkes Night, to scrap metal yard, before redevelopment sent us to Becontree in Dagenham and finally to Australia.

It also reminded me a little of Jerome K. Jerome’s delightful though now largely forgotten little book Three Men in a Boat, my edition published by J.M. Dent in 1956, which, on reading, proved to be nothing like I imagined it, having seen the film version, also from 1956, starring Laurence Harvey, David Tomlinson and Jimmy Edwards, countless times on the telly through my childhood. Ah, the beauty of books, but that of course is a whole other story.

Now, don’t get me wrong—I’m not “stuck in the past” with my reading. I recently reviewed a book in Quadrant by the Australian singer, songwriter and diplomat Fred Smith, The Dust of Uruzgan (2016), based on his experiences as “diplomat on the ground” at Australia’s base in Afghanistan, Taren Kowt, which also spawned two CDs of songs. Then there was Jimmy Barnes’s first volume of autobiography, Working Class Boy (2016), though that was as much because he’s an old friend—I’m in there, on page 305, if you’re interested—as wanting particularly to read it.

More recently I’ve read a nice little book for older teens by John Marsden titled Winter (2000) and a fantastic, deeply moving novel with a touch of magic realism, Snow on the Moon (1996), by the American writer Keith Heller, another writer I’d not previously come across but bought in the op shop. Just by the by, the heroine of Marsden’s book is named Winter, that of Heller’s Evelyn Winter.

Between other delights, I dip in and out of Isadore Brodsky’s quirky reflections on The Streets of Sydney (1962, rescued), discovering a little something more of the town that’s been my home and workplace now for more than thirty years. That was preceded by a joyous bathe in Delia Falconer’s Sydney (2010).

I also try to keep up with as many contemporary journals—musical, literary and socio-political—as I can afford as a freelance writer (a pursuit these days of vastly diminishing returns), but, well, with anything up to two dozen titles a week either bought or rescued, I’m hard-pressed just getting through whatever’s closest to hand after I’ve finished my paltry quota of features or reviews for my currently only outlet as a freelancer. I just can’t afford to buy new books!

The bottom line is I can’t bear the thought of all these books ending up at the local tip to rot back into dust. Sure, I could “feed my habit” far more efficiently via eBooks and all that but, as is obvious, I’m “old school”—I like the feel, the smell, of the actual artefact. And there’s a certain sadness, for me, in seeing something that was once a treasured object, read, pondered and perhaps shared with family and friends, being so wilfully discarded.

My decision to try and keep my collecting only to hardcovers, purely on aesthetic as well as practical (space) grounds probably saw me overlook several other volumes that might also have come from the library of fellow Australian writer, poet and critic R.F. Brissenden. I’m so pleased, nonetheless, that I’ve saved Barry Hill’s short story collection, A Rim of Blue, and his novel, Near the Refinery, published in 1978 and 1980 respectively, both rescued, not only for themselves but also perhaps for some future bibliophile who, on seeing the finely-wrought signature of Brissenden on the inner flyleaf of each, might then wonder who this might be and, after reading the Hills, seek out his other very fine work.