THE question we’re usually asked, when people visit for the first time, is “have you read them all?” Almost every room is filled with books, floor to ceiling, or around the walls. Over a lifetime of reading, writing, reviewing – and, in my husband’s case, dedicated book-buying since he left school – thousands have accumulated.
One friend described it as over the top but I think she meant it kindly. Others wonder if we ever lend them? – rarely; do we give them away? – yes, lots; have more than one copy of a title? – yes, not always deliberately; find it easy to put our hands on a title at short notice? – not always. How much time, they wonder, would it take us to read them all? Longer than we, or they, will ever have.
Rooms are arranged thematically – poetry and fiction in one, American classics and Scottish titles in another. Travel and journalism are neighbours on one wall, while children’s books loom over the spare bed, and so on. We view it as a form of additional insulation; it also shrinks space, thereby requiring less furniture.
The ideal conditions to store books are cool and slightly damp: in other words, incompatible with their owners. And while there is a regular triaging of the ones we want to keep, those whose fate is as yet uncertain, and the remainder to be disposed of, more arrive every week. They land on the doormat with the post, or appear along with the groceries, after a detour to a book shop. Others are birthday and Christmas gifts, from friends and family who understand that there is no such thing as too many good books.
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You can therefore imagine my horror to read that in Germany, publishers are advising readers to buy early for Christmas in case stocks run out. Because of a drastic paper shortage, additional print runs of popular books have been cancelled. Compounding the problem is the supply chain crisis, which means delivery of some titles is delayed by weeks or even months. The head of the major German publisher, C K Beck, warned readers to brace themselves: “I’m very much afraid that this Christmas people won’t be able to count on getting hold of every book at short notice.”
If you’ve been searching lately for a garden bench, you’ll be familiar with the scarcity of wood, and its escalating price. The cost has risen 300 per cent on pre-pandemic levels, affecting DIY stores, construction firms, and the production of tables, beds and chairs, sheds, kitchens, and much else. In Germany the situation is worsened by declining sales of printed newspapers and magazines, which has resulted in less paper for recycling at the same time as demand for Christmas packaging soars. As a result, in Germany, but quite possibly elsewhere too, books could be competing with patio furniture for a place under the fir tree.
At various points in recent years it has become clear that the world is changing faster than we can comprehend. In many areas, from health to climate, terrorism to travel, banking to food, what was once unthinkable is no longer beyond the pale. The prospect of books disappearing from the shelves, of bookshops closing, printing presses ceasing to roll, and authors being read solely in digital form, ought to be the stuff of dystopian fiction. That it is suddenly a real possibility indicates the dizzying turmoil of our times.
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Wood has been pivotal to the growth of civilisation but it’s not until alarm bells like this are ringing that you begin fully to appreciate how heavily we depend on it. Only when a cheap and easily available material on which print could be set was found did book production take off.
The earliest writing was on cave walls and stones, followed by animal hides and parchment. Papyrus was useful, but it was pulped wood that transformed the idea of a book, and in so doing helped launch the modern world. If Gutenberg had devised his press in the age of parchment, how much more slowly intellectual and scientific enlightenment would have spread. In technological terms, we might still be in the 18th century.
Few places have grasped the opportunity to publish more enthusiastically than the UK. With an annual output of over 180,000 titles, we sit third in the world rankings, behind China and the US (and on average, we read between one and five books a year). A London literary agent once commented that such astonishing productivity was “either a sign of cultural vitality or publishing suicide”.
Jamie Byng, head of Canongate, ruefully admitted that “ we publish too many books, Canongate included… Less is so often much, much more.”
By one calculation, 20 books are published here every hour. It’s like seeing the figures from the country’s maternity wards, but far scarier. Our natural reproduction rate is generally enough to sustain the population, or thereabouts. Meanwhile, we are deluged with books.
Yet intimidating though that sounds, it is surely better than the alternative. Can you imagine what would the world be like without books you could hold in your hand? There are enough previously-loved titles to last many lifetimes, but while that might satisfy those of us still trying to catch up – an impossible task – new books are the lifeblood of a cultured, questioning, outward-looking society. If the first act of dictatorship is to take control of the airwaves, it doesn’t take long to remove books they don’t approve of, and their authors too.
Sadly, e-books aren’t the answer, since they cannot be widely shared. They have their place, but are no substitute for the physical object and everything it represents. Quite apart from the aesthetic and practical qualities of a printed book, it brings with it an echo of everything that has come before, and anticipation of what is still to come.
Perhaps the threat of empty bookshelves will sharpen our appreciation of arguably the finest invention mankind has known. It might even mean that one day soon we’ll feel obliged to open our doors and turn the house temporarily into a lending library. As and when that happens, please observe the “Silence” notices.
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