Something I will always, always remember because, even at age 15 or so, it brought me such joy, was when I bought on eBay a first edition of Sylvia Plath’s Crossing The Water collection (of course I did), and stuck to the page of the poem A Life was a squished dead fly.
I own a lot of books. Whenever I look for a new place to live, there must be a surfeit of shelving or the space to create it. The books come to me in various ways: as gifts, as new hardbacks from independent bookshops, as last-minute airport paperbacks, sent to the office by publishers (thank you), Amazon deals (I don’t think any of us are innocent of that). My favourites are secondhand editions.
A Life is a good way to describe it; books have lives. No two people read a book in the same way – each of us brings our experience to bear on a text. The exciting thing about a secondhand book is that one knows at least one other person has done precisely that. While we might not have insight into how exactly that played out, we do have a glimpse into the book’s journey. So many clues, each book a sort of Sherlock Holmes case to crack. A handwritten message to a lover in the inside fold (what ensued?) The notes of a GCSE student getting to grips with their set text. (Did they pass? Their bored jottings suggest not.) Postcards as bookmarks that flutter out from two-thirds in (was the book ever finished?)
The pages yellowed by sunlight. The glorious, musty smell of old classics. A price given in shillings. Pages stuck together from sweaty hands. Crinkled pages from a spilt glass of water or a damp loft. Sand in the centrefold of a trashy beach-holiday read. The jacket of a beautifully designed Penguin Modern Classic clinging on by a sliver of glue. Or detached pages, taped back in.
I love the smell of new books, too, fresh from the printers. But it’s the same difference as buying a brand new top and a vintage dress: you know nobody has gone out and danced the night away in your H&M tee. Nobody laid their hands upon it, around their partner’s waist.
With secondhand things, you might pick up a book that changed a person’s life. And that book might change your life. Maybe you will leave it somewhere accidentally, and it will transform someone else’s life. Or perhaps they will hate it.
That’s the thing about getting a secondhand book: you get two stories in one.
