Books Do Furnish a Room

Cloud-Borne Strings of Ones and Zeroes Just Don't Do It.

I

My title, Books Do Furnish a Room, is taken from Anthony Powell's magisterial novel. It is also the nickname for one of the novel's principle characters: the alcoholic writer, Bagshaw. The cognomen is never satisfactorily explained, but is ascribed, apocryphally, to a remark Bagshaw purportedly makes while consummating an adulterous affair in a library; or alternatively to an accident in which he overturns a massive bookcase onto himself. Be that as it may, books do indeed furnish a room. A bookless home is somehow less homely. I enjoy the their companionship; their silent presence.

I lodged for a couple of years in the house of a retired academic. She was bookish - and doubly so, for her field was English literature. That a scholar of English literature would also be a natural bibliophile seemed fitting. When I went to see the room, the ambience of the house appealed to me right away. The décor was shabby: wallpaper discolored and peeling slightly, carpets threadbare and a little grubby. But these things were unimportant; for a serene scent of scholarship suffused the place. In the hallway I saw into a room devoted solely to books: it was a library. Yes, a domestic residence with its own library.

Naturally I examined the library more closely. Not just the books - I also mean the construction, for I am always curious to discover how other householders store their books. The bookcases epitomized the master-craftsman: they were held together by professional joints; not the glue, nails and plastic fittings used by unskilled bodgers. Everything was custom-fit; there were no ill-fitting ready-mades. It was top-quality wood as well, properly varnished - the type which invites you to caress it - not cheap-and-cheerful chipboard, disguised by a plastic laminate. These books led luxurious lives.

My first house was too small to permit a library: my books shared their living accommodation with the hi-fi and television. But, being an older house, it possessed those singular features beloved of bibliophiles: namely, inglenooks. Just as invading armies seize hill tops as vantage points, so, too, do invading bibliophiles seize recesses for bookshelves. I also installed a considerable mileage of shelving around the house. Books were in all the rooms, save kitchen and bathroom.

Which type of shelf is best? To me, adjustable shelves are a needless expense. Once I've adjusted a new set of shelves, there is never any subsequent re-adjustment. I cannot recall a single occasion on which I've raised or lowered a shelf. Once my books are parked, they stay parked.

Free-standing bookcases are a mystery: why do they always lean forward drunkenly? The base rests against the skirting board, but the top is four inches from the wall! These bookcases resent their cargo; they are trying to shed it. I have been forced to install a securing bracket: the bookcase then resembles a person standing on his heels. Book shelves are best attached directly to the wall.

The best shelves have 'backboards', otherwise an unsightly strip of wallpaper peeps out between the summits of the books and the shelves immediately above. The efficiency with which books are housed can be gauged thus: wallpaper betrays wasted space, into which yet more books can be crammed. By assembling books of similar sizes, the shelves can be placed still closer together, making even more efficient use of the available space. Ideally, books just touch the underside of the shelf above. The wall paper is hidden. In fact, book spines are the wall paper.

On the parade ground soldiers do not lean against one another, and I take the same line with my books. Also, my books are never Stonehenged - like sarsen stones, laid horizontally across the upright ones. Stonehenged books look untidy, and dusting becomes awkward. I'm also a precipice man: all spines nudge up to the edge of the shelf, peering down at the floor. Dust then accumulates behind the books, where it remains unobserved. If books are pushed to the back of the shelf, this allows an unsightly strip of dust to gather in front of them. Pushed-back books, moreover, form an unsightly wall of spines, all higgledy-piggledy. That said, the pushed-back method has one merit: small ornaments can be placed in front. But I don't like to block access to my books.

All my books are free range: I never treated them like battery hens, shutting them away inside windowed cupboards. The exclusion of dust is of course a great advantage. But I feel sorry for books incarcerated thus, peering out through their pathetic little windows, appealing for rescue. Windowed cupboards, it seems to me, discourage curiosity, free inquiry and free exchange of ideas, all of which are the rightful concomitants of books. A good way to stop a book being read, is to immure it in a cupboard. Totalitarian regimes surround their countries with walls, the purpose of which, they insist, is to keep foreigners out, when in reality, it is to keep citizens in.

Also, I never double-park my books. If I have unhoused books, then I put up more shelves. But the shelves and the books vie with one another in an unending struggle. Sometimes I think, 'I really must put up some more shelves to accommodate those unhoused books.' And at other times I think, 'I really must buy some more books to fill up that empty shelf space.'

II

A new technology has just emerged - it is unbeatable, and is exciting biblioheads the world over. It is portable; it has no need for a power supply; it has no need for a wi-fi connection; if cared for it will work reliably for hundreds of years; it is cheap; it is easy to use; it is tried-and-trusted; it can be thumbed through easily; it is comfortable to curl up with (in bed or by the fire); it does not need to be upgraded, downloaded, hyperlinked, uploaded, synched, rebooted or plugged. You just open it!

We have heard it many times: 'the death of the book is nigh - digitize or die!'. This perpetual tolling reminds me of those end-of-the-world placards. As we know, the end of the world has been nigh for a very long time - for hundreds of years, in fact. We are not at the end. Not yet. It may well be getting closer, but no-one really knows just how long 'nigh' is. Likewise, books doggedly persist as tangible artefacts.

Now, I am no high-end techno-nerd: I've had my fingers burned by new technology far too often. I never adopt new technology, if the old technology still does everything that I want. In my library, I just take the old technology down from a bookshelf, open it and start reading. E-books can stay in the ether - digital reading be hanged! Give me a loverly chunk of paper and cardboard.

The e-book moreover threatens our cultural heritage - I refer to the accessibility of the storage medium. This is already a problem with the visual record. We can for example still access photographs from the Victorian age. All we need do, is place the negative on a sheet of glass, pass light through it, and re-capture the image by a photographic emulsion. But how long will today's photographs, stored digitally in branded products using proprietorial software, remain accessible? How about a 35-millimetre ciné film of granddad on the beach in the 1970s? Or a Betamax videotape of a high-school graduation ceremony in the 1980s? Or a six-inch floppy disc carrying your first undergraduate essays from the 1990s?

We must transfer information diligently, across every technological discontinuity, otherwise it may fall into a gadgetry abyss. The information in books-as-tangible-artefacts, however, is less readily lost. We will lose the information in English language books, when the English language is lost. We require no fancy gizmo to read the First Folio. We read it in the same way as Shakespeare's contemporaries read it: we just open it.

E-books distil painfully-won thoughts and ideas into coldly logical strings of ones and zeroes, located somewhere in the ethereal electronic cloud. The mind responds warmly to the beauty of book-as-object; but frigidly to a soulless e-book. (Has anyone ever cried, while reading an e-book?) We may potter about, peacefully and contentedly among our bookshelves; but who potters about with a Kindle? Like a book, we may read a Kindle in the bath - it's just that you wouldn't want to drop it. Although the research is still tentative, psychologists believe that our brains process information on screens differently; and that we remember things better when on paper.

We cherish the books on our shelves; but we cannot cherish strings of ones and zeroes. 'Happy birthday, darling!' 'Thank you, dear. Oh, I see you've bought me a download of the latest Dan Browne. Just what I wanted'. In my copy of the Nature of the Physical World by Arthur Eddington, I see the inscription 'To daddy, Christmas 1934'. I wonder who daddy was, who the daughter was, and where the book lay for eighty years. On page thirty-three in my biography of Lloyd George, an unknown hand has underlined a quotation, and written in the margin: 'Lying bastard!'. There is a whole field of scholarship devoted to such marginalia. If Fermat had thought of his last theorem while reading an e-book, we would be none the wiser.

The tangible book reveals the interests, beliefs and sometimes passions of the owner; indeed our own bookshelves reveal our biographies. When I'm a guest in someone's house, I always take a cheeky look at the volumes arranged on the shelves. Tangible books, on display, will spark discussions in a way that a bookless room does not. If the householder's books are trapped on a computer, phone or tablet, as strings of ones and zeroes, downloaded from that virtual library in the sky, then other topics of conversation must be sought.

III

The haptic experience conditions the reading experience; and the chess books published by Bell and Hyman were magnificent in this regard. As a teenager I purchased Capablanca's 100 Best Games from the Methodist Bookshop, for the strange price of £6.32. As I travelled home on the bus, I remember caressing the paper with its slightly roughened surface. The shiny, glossy, wipe-proof finish one finds in many of today's books, is insipid and Formica-like.

A book is not only a haptic experience, as I realised uncomfortably when a bookish friend handed me one of his precious volumes to peruse. I forget what the book was about; I mention this, because of how I came to give myself away; for I did not flick through the book, stopping now and then to read short passages from it. Instead I did this: I raised the book to my nose, and fanned the pages past my nostrils, gauging the strength and beauty of its odour.

My friend jolted me from my sensory pleasure: 'Does it smell good?' he asked. For an instant I felt foolish. 'Perhaps I'm the only person in the entire world who does this', I thought. But my friend's expression was unmistakably conspiratorial. His face said, 'Don't worry, for I, too, am a book-sniffer. Yes; we share this indecent habit. I won’t say anything if you don't'.

During Robert Robinson's Stop the Week on Radio 4, one of the contributors, confessing to this indecorousness, complained about the censorious looks he receives in book shops. That is to say, these olfactory predilections are not understood by society. Prior to the book-sniffing act, therefore, it is advisable to cast a furtive glance around us, to ensure that we are unobserved, in the manner of a coke-sniffer 'doin' some rails'. We are given that pejorative term, 'book-sniffer', as if our habit is lewd, or we greet each other in the manner of canines. For these reasons, I prefer the term 'biblio-olfactophile'.

The specific properties of old-book smell are frequently disregarded, or only slightly noted. They derive partly from the cellulose from which the paper is made, partly from the glues in the binding, and partly from the ink. Over many years, chemical disintegration, aided by metabolizing bacteria, release other substances which, being volatile, escape into the surrounding air. (There is another aspect possibly known only to dogs: the olfactory residue of hundreds of different hands, and dozens of different environs.) The necessity for decades-long degradation explains the wonderful odiferousness of second-hand bookshops. In Waterstones or Foyle's, the air of which is insipid by comparison, bacteria and acidification have not yet begun their all-important work.

The olfactory experience conditions the reading experience, even if only subrationally. This is perhaps more important during childhood, when our sense of smell is so much keener. A certain copy of Treasure Island was my father's childhood book. It was the first full-length book I read on my own. Captain Hook's fate was somehow rendered more interesting by the olfactory experience. Similarly enjoyable was All About Gardening by G.H. Preston, given to me by my grandfather. The book's odour unquestionably affected the way I viewed gardening; the way I felt about it. Even today when I shove the spade into the damp earth, and the soily scent of humus rises to my nostrils, I recall the comforting odour of All About Gardening. I award both of these books ten out of ten on the pong index.

I wonder how many book-sniffers are out there. Perhaps we are few. Perhaps we are many. I might stop at the perfume outlet in a department store and ask one of the sales staff, 'Have you got "Old-Book Stink?" ' Bibliophiles like myself would love such a scent. You could get your own living room smelling like a second-hand book shop in no time. An entrepreneur would clean up. A good snort of book odour takes you to another world.

(c) cufwulf

cufwulf@aol.com