Head in a book

I had a new friend over to my apartment on the weekend. She was astonished at all my books. I was astonished by her astonishment. I grew up in a house with a lot of books. My dream house definitely features either a real bona-fide library, with wall to ceiling shelves and a gallery, à la the Taylorian, or some ingenious book storage spaces. Books are essential to me. On my travels round Greece with the girls last summer, we discovered that even at 7 in the morning, and in a somewhat inebriated state, I would not sleep unless I had read a few pages (..or lines..) of my book. I think this might be a hang-up from insomniac concerns, but the fact remains that for me, a book is the answer to a lot of my whims, desires or needs. When packing for Paris, I knew I would only need three things to make wherever I ended up feel like a home – photos, bunting and one or two books.

In times of stress, an early night with Nancy Mitford’s Pursuit of Love after a run and warming meal of pasta can work wonders. Feeling a little bit miserable and homesick is easily remedied by curling up on my sofa with my geese-print pillow and a new Persephone book. Unable to sleep, a childhood Rumer Godden will always send me off. Chicklit always feels like a deliciously sinful indulgence, and none is more wickedly fun than Jilly Cooper (my favourite author to use in an English theory essay). I stupidly neglected to bring any Mitford with me, favouring Moliere, Rabelais and Joyce in an ambitious (failed) attempt to kickstart my finals reading, but am looking forward to reading ‘Wigs on the Green’, which I will bring back with me after my visit home for Easter. As a teenager, I never used to understand my mother’s passionate devotion to bookshops, and my father’s long-learned resignation to this fact – ‘Oh god, not a bookshop… We’ll go and get a coffee. See you in two hours darling. Please don’t spend all our money’. I found it embarrassing and yet another manifestation of my family’s complete refusal to be who I thought they should be – cookie-cutter Jack Wills Boden wearing parents who went to Rock and Salcombe and had drinks parties. (I know, I know). As I grow up, I realise, typically and with varying degrees of horror, joy, pride, intimidation and astonishment, that in fact I am turning into my mother, and that this is not a bad thing. One of my absolute favourite shops in Paris is the ultimate expat Parisian cliché – Shakespeare & Co. Yes, its full of pretentious pervy Americans in bad glasses, who jizz themselves when you say you go to Oxford and are incapable of having a real discussion about literature, but it is exactly what a bookshop should be – charming, varied, intensely knowledgeable and open to all. They also have a cracking second hand bookshop, where you can find wonderful old editions which make fabulous, intensely personal presents.

My grandparents have an astonishing knack for fortuitously picking up first editions, and generously passing them on to me, with the suffix ‘in case you’re ever in a real jam, you can always sell this’. My T S Eliot and Plaths are immensely treasured, special and almost talismanic, giving off this weird ‘Oh my God you are literally one of the first copies of this amazing now-classic ever read’ vibe. Its crazy that a book can, for me, hold so much power, but they really do. A bad book will put me in a real funk, a good one will propel into a soaring, elevated burst of euphoria and result at least three days of me formulating my thoughts in the style of the book (I do not for one second pretend that this is anything other than just plain weird, and that I live inside my head far too much).

In short, I suppose what I am really trying to say is BOOKS ARE MARVELLOUS, and anyone who doesn’t think so will always be viewed with a certain amount of mistrust and bewilderment. Work is horrid at the moment – either frantic, or yawningly dull (or in fact usually actually frantic with yawning dullness) and I am trying to resist the temptation to sack it off for a day and curl up in my apartment with a book. Must stave of this desire until little bro + girlfriend arrive next week, so I can show them all the best bits of Paris. Ach..life as a working gal sucks.XOXO

(Photo - the sartorialist i think...the perfect red coat.)