Damp

Writing on the good and bad of Kindle, Fictionbitch says: My whole life has been wedded to the physicality of books and their shelves, the way they sat beside my bed on the little white bookcase my parents bought me, or on the planks and bricks I set up in my first-ever flat...' I love this, it resonates so much, the connection we have with the physicality of books (and book shelves!). This weekend, I was reading Teju Cole in the bath and afterwards the book was damp with crinkled pages, and although I'm having a troubled relationship with this novel, the damp book was beautiful lying on the floor, and I thought this is a thing of the past, crinkled books in the bath, when we have given up on our books altogether, what will we put on our shelves instead? A friend recently told me 'her dream house would have shelves with a Kindle and perhaps a shell or one perfect candlestick'. I do like this image - I hate clutter. Except books, I don't really mind 'organised' book clutter and I think - I know - I would miss my books as a backdrop.