When marking it, I had to be careful lest the tip of the pen pierce the page.
The supple paperback bent easily as I gripped it in moments of mild anxiety, crisp fore-edge whispering against my palm. My copy of View from the Cheap Seats wasn’t brand new. Why do wish to be surrounded by physical copies of books and have trouble discarding them when there are plenty of old and new books available at relatively affordable prices? What are the properties of the book as an object and of the reading experience that produce attachment? She examined interviews, group discussions, and data collected by the UK’s Mass Observation Project and proposed the questions:
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María Angélica Thumala Olave, a lecturer in global sociology at the University of Edinburgh, explored such attachments in a series of studies between 20. But studies show that people become attached to their books in scientifically verifiable ways. A few hours later, when I realized my mistake, I panicked. I had bought another copy to give away, but in the grogginess of an early morning, I grabbed the wrong one off my desk. Once, I accidentally gave away my favorite nonfiction book-one I had highlighted and underlined and dogeared. The closeness I feel to my books makes it hard for me to understand someone saying “I just don’t read.” Losing one is like cutting off an arm. There’s comfort in knowing other people participating in what seems to be an increasingly undervalued practice. I don’t want to make them feel bad about whatever it is they do instead, so I usually end up saying, “Maybe you just haven’t found the right books yet.” Or I interrogate them about their other interests until I think of a book they might be interested in.Īfter such interactions, I’m quick to retreat to my little bubble of book-lovers-a small circle of friends and acquaintances who read deliberately and privately. I know lots of people say they “don’t read” or “haven’t read a book since high school.” They shrug and accept this, and I feel sad. But I can’t get another one-not another one with my highlights, underlines, and hand-drawn emojis in the margins. There are probably several thousands in print. The closer we get to the Toulouse-Blagnac Airport, the more I feel I’ve lost something far more valuable than the £10 or £11 I spent to gain it.
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I have half a mind to tell the Uber driver to turn around, but my chronic need to not inconvenience others overpowers my desperation to retrieve what is increasingly feeling like car keys or an ID that I’ve misplaced. But I had left his expensive-to-me camera in a friend’s car the day before. “You’re always leaving some shit,” says my friend, who’s with me in the back of the Uber.Īlways is a stretch. I’d had it on the nightstand for sure but had picked it up in the middle of a phone conversation to relay something I’d read earlier that day. Left it behind, abandoned on the floor, shunted beneath the fringe of the bedspread for housekeeping to find and do God-knows-what with.
My copy of The View from the Cheap Seats. (I had remarked to the clerk that they were selling a nice edition of another Gaiman book for far cheaper than I would’ve expected.)Īnd now I’ve lost it. I remember buying it at The Little Apple Bookshop in York on a chilly, late November evening. I’d taken it to work and to casual outings, squeezing bits of reading into the in-between parts of life. I’d underlined and bracketed things that stood out: wisdom on mythology and layering and what makes stories work. I’d been thoroughly enjoying every essay, speech, and feverish opinion or note of praise. The book is Neil Gaiman’s View from the Cheap Seats -over 500 pages long, 280-something of which I’d been making my way through while traveling by plane and train to and around southern France. That feeling is accompanied by uncharacteristically vivid recall: me slipping into sleep, exhausted from three days of vacationing, the book in my hand sliding onto the floor. I’m in the back of an Uber to the airport when dread sweeps over me.
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