I have a new shelf. It is new and handmade and for my birthday. It sits upright and tense, new, in the bedroom, rubee red, beautiful, anxious and ready to house the treasure for which it was made. I am lucky to have a husband who can make magic and that properly, so it lasts forever.
So, who was chosen? Books, this time, were selected and taken to their seats based on how they were dressed at the time of their publication. So, if lined up at the back door of paperback hell, well, no. If they still wear the soft leather of yesterday, then, yes.
If modern with a movie cover, then no fucking way,
If Easton Press, that superior leather bitch club then yes.
If with broken spines, dented knees, lost dentures, dandruff or a history of drunkenness, then no. (But they ( Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker) certainly wouldn’t want to be there.)
If beautiful in all weathers, then yes.
If a gift from afar, from friendship, from love, then yes. ( Letters of Henry Handel Richardson, complete).
Self-help books, those pretentious sons of. No.
From gifted, lifted libraries not my own but given to me, then the yes, voted immediately. The gold text classics, Australian literature, sit up the top tier and give sun. Yes.
A mighty thousand-page volume of literature by women. Obviously.
If clothed in the colours of the Arabian Nights, sapphire, emerald, gold, the dazzle razzle music of insanity and violet, and the sky between twilight and forbidden. Yes.
Dante. Ok.
Things I have not read, have read, might read, plan to read.
Night reads, mostly.
Tag: bookshelves
The Man Who Reads Sir Walter Scott
Well, he came into the shop and stood bowed in front of the old books, the ones with print that is too small, old novels and histories, poetry and commentary, sets dressed in red and gold and dust and that lean and sink and look out at modern paper with contempt. This man frowned into the shelves and scratched at faded titles and had he had next to his feet, a motorcycle helmet and six cans of beer. He had no hair and he simply blazed with tattoos and earrings. He was looking for Sir Walter Scott. He had completed an arts degree and his thing had been Sir Walter Scott, a great, plain, brilliant hell of a man. He had thrown all his books in the bin and was now visiting every reading joint to get copies again. He didn’t get any from me (he apologized) but the print was just too small and now that his eyes were rooted, he needed the bigger writing, but thanks anyway for having a bookshop!
Max Stacks
There is always work to do in the realms of gold.
And Max is always in arrears with the work; the number of shelves that need to be unshelved is relentless and the books clamouring to be loaded cause him untold frustration and joy.
Each day, many times a day, Max works patiently, carrying paperbacks, one at a time across acres of living room to another place, clearly a better place. He surveys each fresh cargo seriously, standing in silence, giving a benediction. Then he returns, the toddler ship, to the shelf, which will soon be another empty harbor.
Sometimes, from somewhere, he will receive new orders and be forced to stop at sea. It is time to stack.
This is an apprenticeship that he has embraced and practiced since he could crawl and when his infant services of carry, balance and freight were precarious at best. Now he is master tradesman, stern with assistance, moving the wrong book aside without courtesy or comment, uninterested in advice.
His baby brain is noticing that dimensions make a difference. He can pack paperbacks with precision. It is appropriate to sandwich classics between Hairy Maclary and Schiller’s Poems and Plays. Once I saw him stack The Father Brown Stories beneath Simone de Beauvoir and on top of her, a small plastic truck.
The prevailing stack is lively. Colin Thiele is a mere slice underneath Cooking with Copha, Manning Clark’s History of Australia has been re dealt, only three of the volumes are necessary and these are decked on top of Hilary Clinton, A History of Persian Architecture and three Viragos. Max stares at Footrot Flats and allows himself to dribble on the cover. He recognises the kitty. He presses the souls of his feet into Asterix. The Britannica Greats are too heavy, Freud, also too heavy, ponderous and creaking along with Dickens, Butler, Proust, Trollope, all the males in heavy sensible shoes that cannot be lifted with one hand. The Russians are no better, the whole set is the same, they talk too much and do not cooperate. Twilight, Breaking Dawn are light and pleasing but they are not placed well, they cannot hold their own weight, they are limp in the sun, they allow Greek Mythology and the Bullfinch to lean and fall. The north corner of the wall is weak, Wolf Hall, although working brilliantly is flung calmly aside as if it was the one that caused the limp.
A History of the World in 100 Objects and Blinky Bill are auditioned.
The Lord of the Rings leans against the window, smoking a pipe, calm, watching.
There is a copy of The Stories of Edith Wharton, once again poked into an odd place between armchairs, its dust cover gently removed, (once I found next to it, a disrespectful and small piece of toast). The dust cover is always found, unharmed, slid between 500 Cabinets and Rocks and Minerals for Young Readers. This book does not get a go at the wall.
Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat has taken the top of the stack.
On the Banks of Plum Creek is sliced on top of Gobbo.
Teddy Goes on a Picnic is the flag, placed carefully on top of a Somerset Maugham.
But then it is lunchtime and there is a calling and a cajoling from the kitchen and the stack is abruptly forgotten and abandoned, its inhabitants left rocking in the warmth of the choosing and the building and the heights and the taking part of library life, in life.
The Shelf of Blue Books
There is a car stopped and parked directly outside the front window of the shop and it is another quiet day but those people getting out of that car are not quiet. They are a group of five retired people and the first lady out of the car swings her door vigorously into the veranda post.
She says: Oh, shit John.
He comes around to her side, kindly. Did you dent my door… you bloody did too.
They examine the dent, leaning close, she has her glasses on the absolute end of her nose. She says: oh, don’t worry about that, that’s nothing… but he bends closer, looking doubtful. There are two more ladies, crowding in and looking solitious.
She says: I’m going over to the tootie, come on girls. And they shuffle off together, carrying bags, cardigans, hats and irreverence.
Another man emerges from the car and comes around to stand on the footpath. He calls out: you girls watch what you’re doing.
He says to the luckless John: If she gets run over, she’ll blame me. Then they examined the post that injured his car.
When’s your insurance due, mate? They move to the edge of the road and talk in low voices.
Then they turn and look through the shop window, They say nothing. They bend to look through the window. Still they say nothing. Conversation has come to a halt, they are looking at books and there is nothing to say.
Then the second man says: pointless sort of places there, aren’t they? Pointless having these anymore.
He looks back across the road, back to something that is not pointless: gawd, here they come, look at ’em coming across that road like that.
But the first man, John, stood for longer looking through at the books.
He says: well, my grandmother had a shelf, full of book and all of em blue, actually it was nice, we kiddies used to stand in front of it, not allowed to touch them, wouldn’t have dared, my grandfather was a bastard, a cruel old fool. But those books, they were important. Because they were nice, added colour to her life that was really shitty. I only just remembered it.
The others crowded close, breathing on my window, looking polite, waiting for the story to end.
One lady said: very nice.
Then John took his hat off and nodded at the window. The he put his hat back on. He said: well, let’s get a cup of coffee then.
Thea Stilton, I just love you so much…
It is the school holidays again and outside the shop this morning there is a car laden with camping gear and with two small bikes attached to the back. There are children waiting there, one is lying across the back seat with his feet out of the car door, the parents are at the bakery.
They have been instructed to stay put. But the smaller sibling, a little girl, has her face pressed to the window of the shop and is saying Thea Stilton, Thea Stilton, Thea, Thea Thea, I just love you so much… in a sing song voice…until her brother tells her to leave it and get back into the car.
So she does, and she gently closes the door on his foot as she passes to the other side. He twists around and looks at her in amazement, he might yell out but then suddenly the parents are back and there are sausage rolls and juice and buns and the father going back because he forgot the tomato sauce.
Max reads
Max has found the shelves of limitless possibilities. Available blocks for pulling and pushing and stacking and holding and tasting, there is no end to the heavy and papery movement of sliding books. Max’s baby hands flicker and clutch, trying to open the books, trying to close the books, breathing, forgetting to breathe. His big toes are pointed in concentration. And the books, the pages, the authors look on unafraid, such passionate exploration is what they were made for.
The Young Lovers
They came into the shop yesterday morning.
They looked through the classics, the science fiction and the reference books together, laughing, tender. She carried a copy of Pinocchio around, she kept tapping him on the shoulder with it. He was looking through the art books and every time she tapped him with the copy of Pinocchio, he laughed. They bought the Pinocchio and also a copy of Wind in the Willows and then The Kite Runner. They were best friends. He struggled to stand upright Little Dorrit and Great Expectations which had toppled from their places, he could not stand them upright at all and she bent forward, hilarious with the fallen paperbacks and his kind hands.
He said: excuse me, I think it was you that knocked them forward anyway… they are both glowing, pushing the wayward Wordsworth classics back into rank, staring at Hans Christian Anderson, examining bookmarks, waving Pinocchio, floating in the blue.
Photography by Zeny Rosalina
20% possum, 10% silk, and 70% merino
An old lady came in from the tourist bus across the road; she was in a tremendous hurry because she said that the buses leave on the buzzer and won’t wait for an old lady. But another lady, on the same tour and going through the cook books at a great pace said that “This is nonsense, Dot, don’t tell people that.” Dot asked me for some outback books, a good read or something and she chose Douglas Lockwood and then she circled the shop looking for her walking stick which we found hanging on her arm.This pleased her very much and she cut out for the waiting bus at a great pace. The other customer said to take no notice but I privately admired her energy and enthusiasm and complete disregard of the winter.
Ryland parked his scooter at the front counter and unpacked his new football boots. He said that he just could not get his old boots to last the season and that also he was in the middle of about ten books. Then he said that his mum knew nothing about Star Wars even though she thought she did. He came back with a Jane Jolly book and said that Jane Jolly was his library teacher and that he didn’t have this book. He pointed to the name of the illustrator and asked me did I know that she had many different draw- ers for her books. He looked at the name Di Wu for a long time. He said he thought that this name came from a different language.
I was asked for The Navel Diaries of Jacob Nagel and Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en. Later it was Throy by Jack Vance, a triple volume (number 5) of Herge and The Green Bicycle by Al Mansour Haifaa.
David is 88 and he pulled from his bag a jumper and asked me to read the label on the back of the jumper. I read: 20% possum, 10% silk, and 70% merino and he said to me that it is an amazing garment because it looks good, feels nice and keeps him warm. He unpacks his bag and tells me the story of each item he is carrying: chocolates for his friend who has Alzheimer’s, three hats to help him through the weather, pickles from his favourite store, his remarkable jumper, a scarf, a book called Historic Homesteads of Australia and a volume of CJ Dennis which he has just bought from here. When he left he said that there is a story about Old Father Time who walks up behind an old man in the street and taps him on the shoulder. That is the whole story; it made David laugh and said that the story would not mean anything much except to an old person.
He piled everything on his walking frame and thanked me for having such a lovely place here. He made his way, slowly, slowly across the road toward home and now wearing 20%possum, 10% silk and 70% merino.
Margaret came in as David left and told me that she is not a committee person; they make her shudder even though some people simply live for them.
Now it is quiet again, I can continue with Dorothy Parker and gaze at the descriptions of authors that I admire from the 1920s and 1930s being excessively mean to each other.
Max stopped to give me some ginger chocolate that he bought from down the road and high recommended.
A couple bought a biography of Aaron Copland for their adult son and argued over how they might present it to him. But I am still reading (without interrupting their discussion) that Dorothy Parker did not in any way like A. A. Milne and I am astounded.
Now I stand and look at the shelves and wonder about all these books and Dean comes in to pick up his Bhagavad Gita. I tell him about the astonishing quarrels of great writers and he said that nothing has changed. Then he told me about the difficulties of honey.
The Book Keeper Book Shop 