The Kindness of Book People

As is its wont, Facebook brought back a memory which has now left me with an ache.

Every Tuesday at university, E. and I went shopping for vegetables at the open market in Library Square. Apart from fresh produce, other things were also sold, books in particular. Therefore, one of E.’s jobs was to be the voice of reason and restrain me from looking in the bookseller’s direction. After all, we were students on a budget and I’d struggle to take all my books home with me to India.

But books are not just visual — they carry an energy, a fragrance, a power, which they transmit in various ways— you just know you are in the presence of books when you meet a reader, for example. E. had a difficult challenge ahead of her; I didn’t have to look in the bookseller’s direction for his stall to cast its spell.

This bookseller, a middle-aged man with a mop of mostly grey hair and a pink face, was a pleasant person. We barely spoke to each other, except to exchange pleasantries, but he soon knew me for a regular customer. So it was that, one typically English day, he told me that he would have given me a discount if I’d brought along some sunshine. True to his word, he did, when I went back on a Tuesday that turned out sunny. He also told me that he was like Jack Kerouac, “On the road,” because he didn’t have a stall anywhere. I was a massive Kerouac fan back then, so you can imagine how happy that statement made me. (By the way, the book I bought that day was The Road to Wigan Pier. I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t read it yet.)

Over the years, I’ve come across a number of booksellers of different kinds: crabby (Capitol Hill!), avuncular (Book Centre), kind (see above!), Dickensian (somewhere in Brighton), prim (Georgetown), and so on. Most of them have left behind an impression and, in my typically impractical way, I want to go back to every one of these shops at some point.

I ache for these experiences. I crave the comfort of bookshops and libraries, especially in new countries. Bookshelves tell the stories of the place you are in, of the people on the trains and the sidewalks, of its culture and history. I’m so grateful for the gift of literacy.

“Here you smell coffee and books and magic”

One rainy morning in Thimphu, I walked to a bookshop and spent a cosy hour browsing their used books section. The staff were blissfully playing with a dog, while the few other customers demonstrating the perfect behaviour of browsers, keeping to themselves. This is often the case in most bookstores. It is only proper to shut out the world and bodily necessities in a bookstore or a library. The high concentration and absorption attainable among books, I know only rarely elsewhere. Book browsing is a kind of meditation. Time goes by. The tinkle of rain against the windows is a comforting sound in the background. Gloom, sunshine, anxiety, calm — there is a book for every condition.

Sometimes, the spell is broken at crowded book fairs. Occasionally, I’ve overheard people asking for certain books at stalls crammed tight with books, and having just spotted them, I’m all too keen to take on the role of guide: for what better calling in the world than to show someone to the book they might have been waiting for all their life? Fleeting smiles follow, the flash of recognition among kindred spirits, no more acquaintance with each other than is absolutely necessary. I rearrange books surreptitiously if they are not in line with the others, so that someone else doesn’t have to. You know you do this too.

The Lantern, from where I brought back a carton of books

Some memories just stick. Every time I travel, I try to visit a bookshop to take back a book as a souvenir. It’s almost akin to taking back a piece of the place — and because I know what it means to belong to several places at once, my heart always makes way for more. My mind flits from city to ocean to mountain, creating a hunger only books can satisfy.

This train of thought has been spurred by something other than the Facebook post alone. Yesterday, during the #AskALibrarian hour on Twitter, I asked for recommendations featuring rainy, Gothic settings, evocative of Shirley Jackson. The good librarians of American and Canadian libraries, and their readers, stepped forward generously. If you have my tastes — basically, you’re a sucker for anything like Northanger Abbey, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights— this list might help you, too. The books are listed in no particular order.

1. The Little Stranger — Sarah Waters (I read this last year and loved it; it was recommended by quite a few people)
2. Fingersmith — Sarah Waters
3. The Widow of Pale Harbor — Hester Fox
4. A House of Ghosts — W C Ryan
5. Silence for the Dead — Simone St James
6. Sun Down Motel — Simone St James
7. The Thirteenth Tale — Diane Setterfield
8. Anything by Kate Morton
9. Wakenhyrst — Michelle Paver
10. The Vanishing — Wendy Webb
11. High Lonesome Sound — Jaye Wells
12. The Man in the Picture — Susan Hill
13. White is for Witching — Helen Oyeyemi
14. Selah — Anthony Grooms
15. The Silent Grooms — Laura Purcell
16. The Shining Girls — Lauren Beukes
17. Shirley — Susan Scarf Merrell (Came with a disclaimer: this is actually a novel about Shirley Jackson’s life)
18. The Twisted Ones — Ursula Vernon
19. Mapping the Interior — Stephen Graham Jones
20. Slade House — David Mitchell
21. Head Full of Ghosts — Paul Tremblay
22. The Bone Houses — Emily Lloyd-Jones
23. Mexican Gothic — Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Out on June 30)
24. Rebecca — Daphne du Maurier (One of the first novels I read!)
25. The Loney — Andrew Michael Hurley

If you’re new to horror, just dive into Ruskin Bond’s Omnibus of Ghost Stories. I devoured this in long doses as a teenager, especially when left alone at home. Give it a try: MR James and WW Jacobs will change your life. As for my ache, I’ll go nurse it with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which I started around four years ago on the plane back from DC.