A survey has found that half of an average home’s 138 books go unread. I’m surprised it is as low as a half. Books aren’t meant to be read
Left on the shelf: half of an average home’s books are never opened Photo: Getty Images
The Telegraph - 06 Mar 2014
Do your books shame you in front of visitors, like an overweight dog or a Persian cat with knots in its fur? Do their eyeless backs seem to follow you round the room begging you to read them, after all these years that they’ve stayed on the shelf, unloved as Miss Havisham?
Then I think you should fight back and not let those heavyweight tomes kick sand in your face. A survey has found that half of an average home’s 138 books go unread. I’m surprised it is as low as a half. Books aren’t meant to be read.
For one thing, there nothing worse for a book than being read, unless you live in a termite blackspot or the Somerset Levels. Reading a book is like wearing smart shoes in the rain. It ruins them. The backs go, the natural oils from your greasy-as-sheep fingers leave marks that yellow over time, and then there is snot. Look at any library book and before page 137 you’re sure to find a small crystalline encrustation in the margin. It is what you fear it might be.
I admit that it is vulgar to have one copy to read and another, unsullied copy for the drawing-room alcove. It’s as bad as having two handkerchiefs, one for show and one for blow. We should be like George Smiley, reading a rare 17th-century small folio so precious that it seems quite natural to shoo awkward visitors away from it (and the developed microfilm hidden between its hospitable leaves).
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