19 Sep 2011 01:48:34
There will be Introductions to Modernism, guides to flags and crafts; there will be the words of AS Byatt, Carol Ann Duffy, Ian Rankin; books about butterflies, blood rites, bride flights. Think of it as a wordy treasure hunt, a sort of literary message in a bottle, a chance to toast the extraordinary specialness of books.
In this heyday of online book warehouses, bulk discounts and special offers, of dazzling choice and boundless opinion, how wonderful to find the particular, the singular, the gift of one. These are not reading suggestions spun out by a computer, not the season's new must-reads, nor even some terrifying list of the 100 classics to complete before you die. Rather, these are books blessed by the love of an individual, their pages invested with enjoyment: tales of love and derring-do, accounts of sturgeon and English villages, passions for football, rivers, Proust; words that have summed it up, spelled it out, helped us see the world anew.
And in an increasingly virtual age, book swapping offers a rare treat: a real book, left by a real person, simply celebrating how wonderful they found it to be. How lovely to leave your favourite book in your neighbourhood, on a day trip, or a tube journey, knowing it will be found and revelled-in afresh; and what unexpected joy, to find a book yourself, to take note of its inscription, read its chapters, form your own opinion.
The book I'll be swapping, somewhere in my Hackney neighbourhood this weekend, is John O'Hara's 1934 novel Appointment in Samarra. I chose it in part because it is one of my favourites – an impeccably crafted tale of self-destruction and small-town life in 1930s America – but also because it is, to me, a great example of book serendipity. One evening, at a party, I met a man named Ian. We began talking about favourite books, and he told me to read Appointment in Samarra. I read it, loved it and, taking his recommendation as a mark of good character, set him up on a blind date with one of my best friends. Ian and Alice married earlier this summer. You never quite know where a book recommendation might lead.
There is a Book Swap community, of course: a chance to share and review, to snap it, map it, tweet it. You can enlist others, rally the troops, start a whole book-swapping revolution. But underneath all of this stand the books themselves – worn covers, wrinkled spines, all the creases, notes and smudges; the scent of pages that have been read. And here, too, are their words, reignited: turned potent and thrilling in new hands. Pass them on.
