Meditation: On Second-hand Books

After returning home from a recent visit to my local secondhand bookshop (Books-On-Sea) I discovered that my newly acquired copy of Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums had an inscription in the inside cover. It read: TO CORKY, YOU HAVE A LOVELY DHARMA BUM… HAPPY XMAS! MATT XXX

At first, I laughed, because it’s a hilarious pun, but then I got to thinking about the beauty of gifting, re-gifting and re-selling books.

New books are really nice, make no mistake. The crisp, unturned pages. The uncracked spine. That smell (you know the one). But perfect, fresh-off-the-press books aren’t the real gift when they're given. The gift is the story. Even the high price tag of a rare edition or first printing speaks to the cultural importance of the story within.

One of the most caring and generous acts known to (hu)man exists in the passing on of a book. One person tells another, “I connected deeply with this art and it made me think of you and I want you to experience the beauty of that too”.

My person gifted me a book which was extremely personal to her and, in all honesty, that particular story broke me into a thousand blubbering pieces. It was a catharsis like I had never known. The true weight of that paperback seems immeasurable now when I consider the role it played in bringing us even closer together.

A dear friend of mine regularly passes on books they’ve read and I delight in seeing their little underlinings and annotations on the page. There’s an intimacy in seeing the phrases that struck a chord with them and in being guided by the ghost of their first encounters with the text.

Even in the case of our dear aforementioned chums, Corky and Matt, and their copy of Dharma Bums there’s life in the pages. Remnants of past affection and inspiration under the folded corners of well-thumbed pages.

All this takes effort and, in this uber convenient age, I believe you can show real love by introducing some friction to the process of gift giving. Anyone can send a personalised card and, in doing so, remove all personality but to hold something in your hands and place it into the care of someone for whom you care… that takes time and attention. The value isn't measured in the item but in the idea.

I hope you find your way to a secondhand bookshop soon. Maybe try to balance it with buying new prints and keeping booksellers in business. I've always questioned the ethics of the re-sale market but I'm guessing any true artist would rather see their torch carried further until it lights another beacon than see the extra pennies on their royalty cheque. So, seek one out because, within those little shops, there are little communities of artists, thinkers and people with a hunger for sharing beauty.