What do you do when you’ve just come out of a particularly stressful period and all you want is to live in a little bubble and not think about the surreal things happening in the world around you? I often turn to books. This time round, in proportionate to the stress levels, I’ve actually turned to, uh, a library.

For a long time, one of the projects at home has been to put up a number of bookshelves in a wonky-shaped room which has no windows but is just a passage way to other rooms. Over these two years, for reasons related to politics, this has been happening in fits and starts, which means that we’ve been living surrounded with piles of boxes and planks of wood.

Now, finally, we could welcome the carpenter every day, and hurrah, it’s done. We now have a small floor-to-ceiling library, with a wooden ladder and all. And I cannot have enough of looking at the shelves and going wow, wow, wow, which is not particularly articulate, I know.

But this means that now all my beloved books which for years I have been stacking in boxes in my mother’s washroom, have a place where to live and breathe properly. And finally my mother will be able to see the colour of her wall again and reclaim the room.

It will be a detoxing, and ahem, future-proof, exercise in a way. Will I be keeping all the books? Will some books have memories too painful to stay? Which ones shall I put at the very top? Should they be my most favourite ones so I get to do the hopelessly fun act of clambering a ladder? Or will I want them within easy reachable distance?

So even if I’ve read a book years ago, when I look at it again, I immediately recall the overall feeling it gave me. Some I want to stroke, others I want to ignore

Of course, there is the slight matter that the shelves are to be shared. Which means that at the moment the Significant Other and I are negotiating space and drawing shelf borders and marking No-Man’s-Land shelves. There is another factor to contemplate: do we arrange the books thematically or alphabetically? Fiction and non-fiction? By size or by cover colour? Do we both adopt the same system?

What do we do if we both have a copy of the same book? Will we keep them both? Or should we give away to make more space? But if so, who will give up their dog-eared marked copy? And what if we’ve been given the book as a present?  Ah, the joys of compromises yet to come. What is certain is that early editions of our favourite novels, or those with a beautiful limited-edition cover, or those signed by the author are all staying put.

The thing is that when you read a book, over the days, it becomes a companion. I sort of grow fond of it as I get more into the story and feel a sense of delight as the chunk of pages on the left hand side of the book get thicker and the chunk on the right gets thinner. And in the process, as I’m soaking in the words, little ideas are sown in my mind and some unfold and change my view on the world.

Some also take you back in time. For example, the other day my daughter unearthed my old tattered copy of the fifth book of Harry Potter. Immediately I was taken back to many, many summers ago, at Riviera beach, which is where I had spent hours marathon-reading it. I had then left the book on the roof of the car while I was dusting off the sand and drove off. When minutes later we heard a huge thump on the ground, we thought it was the car silencer falling off (it had a habit of doing that), only to find the poor tome under the wheels, and no Occulus Reparo would fix it again.

So even if I’ve read a book years ago, when I look at it again, I immediately recall the overall feeling it gave me. Some I want to stroke, others I want to ignore. So in a sense it feels like they are objects that have been part of my life, and consequently very hard to give away. Which is why at home we have ended up with piles and piles of them, and why we gave ourselves a little present in the shape of a home library.

Recently I read an opinion piece by Patrick Barkham, a Guardian columnist, who said: “When life is tumbling out of control, I go to my happy place, where I can dream, remember and find order in chaos: I gaze upon my bookshelves.”

That’s just it.

krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @krischetcuti