Book Crack

I drink moderately these days. I enjoy a glass of something now and again, but I don’t care if I never get drunk again. I am a terrible drunk: sloppy, shame filled and prone to endless seas of vomit. I eat mindfully. I think about eating things I like when I’m hungry and try not to get caught up in weird diets or eating all my emotions. I attempt to unsubscribe from thinking that cream horns are evil and Jesus loves kale. If Jesus loved kale that much, Easter wouldn’t involve so much damn chocolate. That is my final word on the matter.

I don’t smoke because I inhaled so much secondary smoke as a child I have the lungs of a deep seam miner. I don’t do drugs because I’m on the fringes of what is considered normal at the best of times. I need no encouragement to tip over the edge I daily skate along with a terrible wobble. I work very hard at not spending all my money on whatever glittering items are crying, “Need Need from the cold pond, bladed and urgent as new grass.” I strive for balance around the swings and roundabouts of my addictive traits and I mostly master all of it. But not when it comes to books.

Books are my greatest passion, my truest love, my sanctuary and my biggest weakness. I cannot break myself of the urgent need to acquire far more books than it is possible for me to read in a single lifetime. There is never a time when I think; ‘Oh, that’ll do.’ They are my endless, endless joy and I am greedy for them. I want to gobble them all up.

Before we moved onto a boat, we had thousands of books, most of which I had bought to read ‘later’. I’m not sure when that later will be, but they are there for when that moment finally arrives. I am prepared. I am a bookish doomsday prepper. One day Netflix will make a documentary about me.

We culled a lot of books due to boat life but I suspect we still have a few thousand. The ones we couldn’t bear to part with are in a storage unit with all the artworks that I also couldn’t bear to part with. Should we ever move back into a house, our cultural needs will be fully catered for but we will need to buy beds. These are my priorities in life it appears and honestly, I’m fine with that.

Even though my spending on physical books has of necessity, tailed off quite severely in recent months, I am a fiend for the Kindle Daily Deal. I know Jess Weasles (as my children refer to him) is an evil man and responsible for the downfall of Western civilisation, but the devil wouldn’t be the devil if he didn’t know how to tempt you and I am weak to his wiles. I also have an ongoing love affair with Netgalley from my time as a bookseller, which means I am always on some kind of reading and reviewing deadline.

My plan, when we moved to the boat, was to fill the shelves with a carefully curated selection from my prepper collection. I would read them and then go and get another box from the storage unit, buying no new books until I had managed to work through several crates worth. Obviously this did not happen. What happens is that I read several books at a time; a physical one from the shelves, one from Netgalley and one from my Kindle, so the rate at which the physical book stash depletes is very, very slow. I had also failed to factor in fossicking around in charity shops and coming across bookish treasures that cannot, in all conscience, be left for a stranger to buy when they were clearly meant for me. We have been afloat for nearly a year and the shelves look as full as they did when we moved in. No boxes have been liberated from the storage unit. I feel I must be grateful that no boxes of books have been moved into the storage unit either, and that is as much as can be hoped for.

Things became more complicated a few weeks ago when I finally allowed myself to step into my local library. I had been banning myself up to this point because I knew exactly what would happen the minute someone pressed a library card into my hands. I can only say that it happened on a day when I was feeling very low and needed something to give me a boost that didn’t involve falling face first into a vat of custard or spending £500 on a painting when I haven’t got walls to hang it on. Oh, the sweet, sweet joy of the library. There isn’t much that can better it. AND IT’S FREE.

When I first learned to read, my mum took us to the library every week. Children were allowed four books out at a time. This was almost pointless as far as I was concerned. My brother, who didn’t care about reading, would barter me his library tickets in exchange for participation in whatever Machiavellian shenanigans we had going on at the time. Even with the bump of his tickets, I had usually read everything three days in and was Jonesing hard by the time the next visit came around. When I got my ticket a few weeks ago, the woman behind the desk said: ‘You can take out up to twenty five books at any one time,’ and my inner, book deprived child did a victory lap and whooped with joy. TWENTY FIVE AT A TIME!

TWENTY. FIVE.

I took out eight books, which was very restrained of me under the circumstances. I had finished them by Easter Saturday and took them back to the library where I sternly reminded myself that I was going on holiday on Tuesday, that I had many books at home that needed reading and that I must not, under any circumstances get out any more library books until my holiday was done.

All the jangle and anxiety of spending five days learning pottery with strangers left me the minute I set foot in the library. It was as if someone had suddenly turned the volume down. I hadn’t entirely realised how noisy it was until it went quiet. That’s not to say that the library was physically quiet. We don't ‘shush’ in libraries anymore. It was Saturday morning and it was story and song time for small people, so it was actually quite ‘Wind the bobbin uppish.’ I didn’t care. I felt calm and happy. I was completely sure of myself and what I was doing for the first time in a few days and that was a delicious feeling. Who cares if a small boy called Rocky is singing Baby Shark next to your knee? It’s a small price to pay. Do Do De Do Do Do.

They’re not even called libraries here in London. They’re called ‘Ideas Centres,’ which I find hugely and irrationally annoying. I have to remind myself: ‘Katy. They can call them Shops for Geoff if they want to. They’re giving you free books. Shut up and take their books.’ I’m just grateful that there are any left at all. Leicester City Council lost all my respect when they closed our local library and merged it with our local leisure centre. A room full of books next to a large, chlorinated body of water is a bad planning choice by anyone’s measure.

I checked my books back in and almost made it out without incident but there was a table of new books by the door that demanded my attention. Before I knew it I was tranced out and clutching the new Iain Sinclair in my hot, little hands. Several moments later I was ensconced in a chair at the back of the library with a significant pile of books by my feet and one open in my lap. I hardly knew how I had arrived there, but it felt right, so I read an entire book and then checked out nine others in a daze before I left.

Now I have to decide which books to take on holiday all over again. I am not a person who plans their holiday packing. I don’t leave things out in a separate room and start filling suitcases weeks before we go anywhere. I leave everything until the last minute except for my books. I start about a month before we leave with a list in my head. I boot this around mentally as I am going about my day to day life, adding and taking books away as I go. About ten days before we leave, I start making piles of actual books, which I leave in prominent places and edit as the days tick down. Then, on the day we leave I spent approximately ten minutes throwing clothes, shoes and toiletries in a bag and about an hour wandering around with books in both hands, finessing my choices.

Of course, once we are underway, if there is a bookshop at an airport or train station, I will certainly be popping in to see if there is anything calling my name. Once we get wherever we are going, I will always go to a bookshop, even if we are in a non English speaking country, because you never know what you will find. If we are in a rental home, I immediately gravitate to the shelves to see what’s what. I have been known to take ten books on holiday, read twelve and come back with fifteen. It’s the way of my people.