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Rosalind Jana, Prospect Magazine says, During lockdown, piles of discarded books sprung up everywhere: outside houses, ranging along low walls, balanced precariously atop gate posts. Leafing through them set my imagination alight.
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I began to treat the piles like clues, imagining the lives of the people who’d left them there.
| Photo: Still Life with Books c. 1630 by Jan Lievens |
During lockdown they sprung up everywhere: outside houses, ranging along low walls, balanced precariously atop gate posts. Some were accompanied by handwritten notes saying “help yourself!” Others were sprawled as though abandoned mid-sort. Everyone was getting rid of books, and, in the absence of open charity shops, the unwanted contents of their shelves were free for the taking.
I came to appreciate these stacks on my daily walks. There was something enjoyable in the occasional glimpse of piled spines while wandering down favourite routes and exploring unfamiliar streets. Something revelatory, too. Among the assorted nutritional guides and thrillers, I found reading material I would never have thought to buy—texts on film and phenomenology, say, or Scottish architecture—and several books I’d been meaning to obtain—thanks to whoever left out Philippe Sands’s on a grey May morning when everyone’s front gardens were teeming with roses.
It wasn’t just what I took, though. It was also about what those stacks gave away. I began to treat the piles like clues, imagining the lives of the people who’d left them there. What had happened in the home now getting rid of multiple teach-yourself-Italian textbooks?...
Over the weekend I put my own box of books onto the street. I felt oddly anxious in the process of doing so, shaking the pages to make sure there were no stray notes or receipts that might divulge something of myself. I wondered why I cared, or what I thought could be inadvertently revealed. Once they were out, though, worry turned into excitement. I had to stop myself from peeking from the front window too frequently, desperate to see what had disappeared.
