A note from a stranger has changed my attitude to books

I have wanted to be various things when I grow up. A digger driver, a cricketer, a soldier, a cricket commentator, an antique dealer and a baker are just a few of the careers I’ve aspired to at one time or another (I’m still not sure what I’m going to be, if I’m honest).

At the age of about eight or nine, I quite fancied being a librarian. I liked the order of a library, and also the little coloured dots that our local one placed on the spines of its books to prevent a kid’s adventure story from being confused with a racy Mills & Boon.

So keen was I, that I decided to replicate the stickers system with the books in my own room: green for sport, blue for science and so on. Occasionally still, I come across one of my catalogued tomes in my parents’ house and wonder at the tragic earnestness of my crazy younger self.

Actually though, it was not long after I’d put Dewey to shame with my colour-coding that I realised I’d created a monstrous eyesore. Far from rivalling the Bodleian, my bedroom looked like the world’s worst piece of pointillist art. I tried to take a few stickers off but they left a messy residue or took bits of the cover away with them.

In the years that followed, I reacted by becoming decidedly precious about any book that came into my possession. Certainly, there would be no stickers on the spine, nor would I sully them by writing my name on the half-title page. Even beyond that, I would avoid any page-folding to mark where I had got up to; I would remove dust-jackets while reading to keep them pristine; and ideally, I would keep books out of direct sun to avoid fading. I became so petty that I was occasionally tempted to tell myself to “shush”.

For the most part, I’ve maintained my obsessive attitude to books well into adulthood. The result is that I have neat shelves full of unspoiled books, some of which I might get round to reading for the second time once I’ve retired. Another consequence is my rising blood pressure when I see that one of my children has left a book open and upturned on the floor. No magic will ever repair my daughter’s set of Harry Potters.

However, I may be on the cusp of revising my attitude – at least a bit. For one thing, it has been a genuine pleasure to discover in some of the books my son has enjoyed recently, my own name, scrawled there nearly 40 years ago by the young librarian I once was. “This book belongs to William Gore,” is the declaration inside The Giant Jam Sandwich, a story as loved by my son as it was, and is, by me. It is a statement that links us: our childhoods, our personalities.

But it’s not all about my own ego. This week, my brother gave me as a birthday present an aged hardback edition of Arthur Ransome’s Coot Club, a longstanding favourite. Thrilled, I opened the book to find a note written by presumably its first owner:

There was a time, not so very long ago, when I would have regarded this discovery as a blemish, but now I found myself doubly pleased at the gift, at the history hinted at by the note and at the pleasure the book must have given to at least one other person – a stranger with whom I can feel the echo of a connection.

I won’t be re-stickering the spines of my books any time soon. But I won’t be dishing out fines to my children next time I see them fold a corner of a page down or write their name on the frontispiece – I might even encourage them. I feel as if I have started a new chapter.