frowny baby

I must be the last person in England not to have read Nineteen Eighty-Four. Seriously. I can’t believe I’ve made it to 33 without reading it.

Big Brother’s present domination of the airwaves reminded me that I’d never delved into the world of Winston Smith, but I knew the book was hiding in my house somewhere. So I rescued it from my bookshelf and opened it. It’s bloody brilliant isn’t it?!

When I lived in Lancaster, one of my favourite things to do was to hop on the train to Carnforth and spend an hour or two exploring the nooks and crannies of the fabulous second-hand bookshop. The shop, along with the opportunity to pretend to be Celia Johnson, was the only reason to visit Carnforth, but every book loving Lancaster student made the journey at some point.

One of the best things (for me) about this book shop was its collection of Penguin Classics, and I loved browsing through the orange covers and finding a gem. So, when Penguin launched the Celebrations range, I coveted them from the second I saw their blue, green, orange, pink, and purple covers.

But, I have made a pledge to buy no books until I’ve read some of the ones languishing on my bookshelves haven’t I? Why, yes I have.

But these are so beautiful that they must be mine! I want one in every colour. So I compromised and hot-footed it across the road to Blackwell’s in my lunch hour and bought ‘The Shadow of the Sun’. I read the first page in the shop, and there was no way it was finding its way back onto the shelf. It looks brilliant, and it’s gorgeous in all its lovely pinkness.

I’m re-reading Oryx and Crake at the moment. If you’ve read it, you might understand why I found this a bit worrying….

I buy lots of books. Sometimes they sit on my bookshelves for years without being read, and sometimes I forget that I even own them. Piles of the poor things are sitting there; purchased or mooched years ago under the “that sounds interesting” banner and then forgotten about.

Atonement was one of those books, but when the film adaptation was released I remembered that it was one of the poor neglected souls, languishing unread on my bookshelves. So I read it. And I loved it. It’s brilliant. It made me wish I was still at university so I could sit in a room and discuss it and then write an essay about it.

So, I’m now working my way through my forgotten paperbacks . I’m halfway through Brick Lane (also brilliant), and I’m making a pile of my disregarded volumes - who knows what treats lie within. I’m putting my Bookmooch account on vacation, and I shall yeald not to temptation during my lunchtime visits to Blackwell’s yummy cafe until I’m done.

Just catching up with the Guardian books blog. My,I can definitely identify with this post and this one! Throwing books away issomething I have always found incredibly difficult. It doesn’t matter whether I hated it, loved it, or was completely indifferent, if I buy a book it is almost certainly destined to live the rest of its days gathering dust on one of my bookshelves. I have books on my shelves that I’m actually reluctant to admit that I’ve read, but somehow they manage to keep their tenancy at chez Charnock. It must be the librarianism! Actually, I threw more books away when I was a librarian than at any time in my life….not my own though you understand. I always found it ironic that the supposed custodian of the book is the one person that you can rely on to chuck out the dust hoarders. It was never easy for me. Packing the unfortunate volumes into boxes always left me with images of books falling into vats of acid with Carmina Burana drowning out the screams. At the very least, the poor mites might have found themselves in a Wetherspoons in Wigan - they’d probably choose Carmina Burana.

No wonder then that I can’t surrender my own books to the same fate! BookMooch came along to save the day, because giving a book away to someone that wants it is infinitely better than, gulp, throwing it away. I find it comforting to have books around, and I chose the right profession did I not? I have books in every single room of my house, and it makes it feel more like mine. I know that I should pick up the books that are sitting on my bed headboard, and my dining table, and my coffee table, and my kitchen worktop, and the floor of my spare room, and put them in some kind of order on a nice shelf. But….could I ever decide on how to arrange them? And…could I ever overcome my terminal laziness to find each and every book a home? Probably not, but at least I have something to read no matter where I am, and none of my books will be ending their days wondering which one of their shelf mates has deplorable taste in after shave.