Book Play

In my experience books are not only good to read, they can be an occasion to play. One of my favourite games is, when I visit someone, to find an excuse to make my way to their bookshelves and start scanning spines. I'm curious to see what they read, of course, but I'm also on the lookout for the surprises that I'm bound to find. 

This game dates back to childhood visits to family and friends when grown-ups were immediately immersed in conversations that didn’t interest me in the slightest. But books did interest me, and my parents were happy to have me quietly occupied pulling books off shelves, so long as I asked if I could, and so long as I put them back.

Mostly I looked for books with pictures of other countries, or stories about animals and/or cowboys. Once at an uncle’s I found a book in a tattered blue binding with a cover image (in gold!) of a coyote howling at the moon. I’d like to find that book again. If I remember correctly the coyote was called Songdog, and his story was a horrifying one about hunters and bounties and poisons and the likelihood that all coyotes would be killed, now the wild west was settled.

Imagine the richness then, and the temptation, of visiting a friend who has been a bookseller, and is the most dedicated and assiduous reader I know: here in Hobart I’m living in a house filled with bookcases filled with books. Many days it’s hard to know just what shelf to look, at let alone what book to pull out and read.

The living room bookshelf

In fact it’s hard to avoid reading book spines here because,  wherever I look, there they are. In the living room—where we sit for wine o’clock, for conversation or to watch the Australian open and the news, or simply to read—are shelves of books on birds and nature, many of them familiar, many of them new. 

Alongside them are books about New York City, where Irene grew up, and a gathering of books about Joseph Cornell and Agnes Martin. That, of course, is the charm of other people’s shelves, the way they mix things up, familiar books alongside the unknown, both old and new. How genial to move from bird books to those about Joseph Cornell and his boxes, so many of which include birds.

Among the unknown books on someone else’s shelves chances are there will be exactly the book that I'm looking for--whether I knew it or not. I always knew I’d find books here that would serve my writing and indeed, when I arrived, three small shelves of books about Tasmania and Hobart were in my bedroom. In the office that has been generously turned over to me the bookshelf holds a substantial collection of writings on Zen and Buddhism. 

The Buddha Library

Reading even their titles is satisfying: The Morning Star, The Gateless Barrier, Nothing Is Hidden, Sounds of Valley Streams, Golden Wind, Don’t Know Mind… Some days I imagine myself reading all these books and beginning to lead a more contemplative life. When the page or screen in front of me gets too much to bear I pull one or another off the shelf for solace. 

In the basement Irene has her studio. Its large window looks across the valley to the Derwent. The walls are lined with bookshelves—fiction, poetry, books on books and reading, miscellanies, anthologies, works on fine art and decorative arts, needlework, Japanese culture—and odd things that don’t belong in any particular grouping. If I had a lifetime here I’d still never finish reading what’s on hand.

The fiction section in their gorgeous built-in bookcases

Elsewhere in the basement: Seven basic plots ...

Close-up: The definition of a new book ...

Among the seven basic plots of a life surely one concerns retirement. When Irene decided to give up her work at Fullers Bookshop here in Hobart, the shop manager, Catherine Schultz, commissioned a gift for her: the little bag shown in the photograph. It was made by Tasmanian textile artist, Tara Badcock, an apt choice, for Irene's other major interest and pastime is textiles. 

That defining statement on the bag originated with one of Irene's dearest Canadian friends and colleagues, bookseller Richard Bachmann (A Different Drummer Books, Burlington, now retired from the trade himself). 


It’s not only the spines of books, or comments from booksellers, that can be material for serious book play. A week or so ago Irene and I went on a gallery walk in downtown Hobart. At the Penny Contemporary Gallery on Liverpool Street we saw a show called Flotilla, work by Joanna Gair. A couple of years ago now Gair’s home, on Tasmania’s Don River (it flows into Bass Strait on the north coast) was flooded. When she returned to the house after the water receded she found plant debris everywhere. She took the debris and combined it with plants harvested from the river’s banks to make paper. From the paper she made the works in this show. (An image of the work can be found here: http://pennycontemporary.com.au)

In some pieces paper was folded and framed, edges out, so it looked like pages in books. When we came home from the gallery Irene rearranged a shelf of her poetry so their pages instead of their spines faced out. 'You can call it "Poetry: Amy Clampitt to Allan Ginsberg"' she said.

Poetry: Amy Clampitt to Allan Ginsberg