In the beginning

As a five year old child a book was a complex set of hieroglyphics to be deciphered by my immature brain. When I finally began to read I realised that the book I’d been given as my school reader was incredibly boring and obviously could be much improved by my customisation. The book becomes something personal with added human intervention. Wether it’s a note written in the margin, childish scribble, or deliberate defacing of a book for example by Joe Orton. The age of a book matters, it degrades with time, the paper yellows and becomes spotted but sometimes it’s impossible to discard because of the history that it holds. The childhood book acts as a coded message or a portal in the memory to take myself back in time.

My Mother read to us continually, as a child it was always a comfort to hear a human voice reading from a favourite book at bedtime or when lying ill in bed. One of the few highly coloured children’s books that I still own, the acid yellow and reds in a book about a naughty child still appeals.

Fantasy can invade your imagination. After reading Phillip Pulman’s His Dark Materials, while daydreaming on the P4 bus travelling to Brixton, I imagined I could see people’s daemons on their shoulders. Being lost in a book while travelling means forgetting where you are in time and space. Reading a book is immersing yourself in someone else’s life and escaping from day to day reality. I can live vicariously with a hard boiled Edinburgh detective on the trail of drug dealers. My life may not be so dramatic but I can delve into the lives of fictional characters for some dangerous living.

Visiting a bookshop, I feel like a child in a sweet shop. So many images, ideas and explosions of colour and type. I am particularly drawn to book covers, a designers representation of the inner imaginings of the author. I often do judge a book by it’s cover, if something is imaginatively designed I am quite likely to buy it. One favourite is Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things, the blue and silver indented swirls give the cover an other worldly feel, reminiscent of other planets. A book’s tactile quality is important, the weight of it, the paper it’s printed on, the smell of the ink.

Art and design reference books are a constant source of inspiration. Getting energy from other people’s work and seeing how designers and artists have broken the rules to create something unique and different from the norm, gives me the motivation to try something new.

Dissension, protest and non conformism can originate from a book. Books can be a powerful medium to spread ideas.

During lockdown the acquisition of books has begun to feel illicit. To get a book from the library it must be ordered first, await its arrival and then visit the library only on a particular couple of days. The entrance is at the back of the building, you must wear a mask to enter. The masked librarian sits behind a desk and points to the shelf where your book awaits wrapped in paper, an elastic band around it and the code written down the spine. Once read the book is then posted back through the letterbox of the library door, there’s something of a secret society about it.