Storytellersunplugged

Where Words Meet

A Pleasant Insanity

by Tim Lebbon

I read a note on a message board the other day that got me thinking about a particular madness from which I suffer. Many of you reading this will be taken by this same madness, and I believe that it’s something fairly unique and really quite fulfilling.

I have about four thousand, at a rough estimate. I know someone with almost thirty thousand. I remember a time when I had about two hundred. Ah, easier days.

Books, of course. The collecting thereof. The madness therein.

There’s no doubt at all that book collecting is a kind of insanity. My wife displays this to me in the regular six-monthly discussion we have that goes something like this:

Tracey: We don’t have any more room for books, can’t you get rid of a few?
Me (aghast): Which ones?
Tracey: The ones you’ve read.
Me: Of course not! I might want to read them again!
Tracey: What about the ones you’ve read that you’ll never read again.
Me: Well … maybe I will. Who knows? And they all mean something.
Tracey: What about all those tatty ‘60s science fiction novels with their covers falling off?
Me: Do you know how rare some of those are?
Tracey: Can’t you get rid of some of those big hardbacks?
Me: But they’re signed!
Tracey: Well can’t you double stack them—
Me: I won’t be able to see the spines!
Tracey: Well, you hardly have time to read anymore anyway, or so you’re always complaining. How many books did you bring back from World Fantasy?
Me: Twenty-two.
Tracey: You’re mad.

See? It’s a universally understood madness, even by those who don’t collect books. It’s life affirming, and also a great indicator of mortality (at the rate I’m reading books at the moment, I have enough unread in my collection to last me approximately the next hundred years).

But it’s also something very, very special. It’s much more personal than collecting bar mats, or tea pots, or the compressed dirt and fluff from the underside of shopping trolleys. The books I’ve read mean so much to me, because every one of them is part of a snapshot of my life. I can remember where I was, what I felt and what was going on around me for virtually every book I’ve read. To pick up that book again ten years later is to revisit that time. For me, books inspire memories more profoundly than music or smell.

Tower of the King’s Daughter by Chaz Brenchley … I’m sitting in a hospital restaurant eating chicken tikka and rice, and Tracey is upstairs in a private room nursing our new baby Ellie. I’m amazed. Tracey has a terrible headache and she spends hours crushing ice between her teeth. Ellie has yet to cry, but I’ve been doing plenty of that for her.

Imajica by Clive Barker … I’m on the way to a holiday in Greece, my first holiday with Tracey, my soon-to-be wife. We’re waiting in the airport through the night for our flight. Not many people around. Tracey is asleep with her head in my lap, I’m reading, and the one other person I can see is reading the same book. We notice and exchange a smile. Later that holiday, I’m sitting beneath a parasol on a beach when I finish the book, and as I look up two startlingly beautiful girls run by topless. Ah, memories.

Ladies’ Night, by Jack Ketchum … I’m sitting on a ‘plane on the way back from World Horror in Seattle. There’s a sweet old lady sitting next to me reading some historical naval romance novel, and every page or two of Ladies’ Night I have to turn away a little, afraid that she’ll get a quick glance at what I’m reading and call security.

There are more, many more, countless more memories that perhaps I’d have forgotten forever were it not for the books I was reading at the time. They provide a library of my past, and the potential of my future waiting to be realised.

I’ll get Tracey to read this. And here’s a message for my dear wife: Now try asking me to get rid of some books.

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