Header overlay

Transports of Delight

I have a pocketful of change. Around me, there’s the sound of clothes hangers on rails. Beyond a bin of old toys there’s a clink of crockery. The flooring’s worn, the smell is musty. I can hardly restrain my fingers. What am I looking for?

I don’t know. That’s just the point.

I’m in one of my favourite places: a charity shop, in the book section. The atmosphere’s hushed. It’s that of a museum, or, perhaps, a library.

But, wait. If I love books so much, why aren’t I in a library, or, indeed, a bookshop?

In a library or bookshop, the librarians and owners have selected. Here in this charity shop – in any charity shop – pretty much whatever books are given to the staff behind the counter get put out on the shelves.

A History of Squash, Understanding Ghosts and Army Uniforms since 1945 are here stashed between The Law of South Africa, 2001 and a cookbook showing a pair of parsley-sprinkled pancakes. It’s all so wonderfully arbitrary.

At home I have schedules that account for every portion of every working day for the next month. I have a wall calendar that accounts for my whole year. Those printed black lines squeeze me. I have to attend this meeting. I have to make that phone call. I have to get a particular book for work purposes.

Wanting something can be frustrating – you try to find it, there are obstacles, nothing else will do, maybe you have to order it, there’s a wait, the wrong book’s delivered. In a charity shop’s book section, I want only to be surprised. It’s like playing a kind of fusty version of The Dice Man.

Stand in front of the shelves, let my finger drift along the spines, see where it lands – The Practical Fossil Finder, The ABC of Relativity – a future expertise in almost any field could start here. And I get sudden, odd moments of intimacy. Most if not all the books are, of course, used.

Despite its inscription in a child’s hand that reads like a plea – ‘This book balongs [sic] to mummy’ – Total Fitness stayed so unread that there are cobwebs on the back. By contrast, a critical study guide to

Subscribe or sign in to read the full article

The full version of this article is only available to subscribers to Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly. To continue reading, please sign in or take out a subscription to the quarterly magazine for yourself or as a gift for a fellow booklover. Both gift givers and gift recipients receive access to the full online archive of articles along with many other benefits, such as preferential prices for all books and goods in our online shop and offers from a number of like-minded organizations. Find out more on our subscriptions page.

Subscribe now or

I have a pocketful of change. Around me, there’s the sound of clothes hangers on rails. Beyond a bin of old toys there’s a clink of crockery. The flooring’s worn, the smell is musty. I can hardly restrain my fingers. What am I looking for?

I don’t know. That’s just the point. I’m in one of my favourite places: a charity shop, in the book section. The atmosphere’s hushed. It’s that of a museum, or, perhaps, a library. But, wait. If I love books so much, why aren’t I in a library, or, indeed, a bookshop? In a library or bookshop, the librarians and owners have selected. Here in this charity shop – in any charity shop – pretty much whatever books are given to the staff behind the counter get put out on the shelves. A History of Squash, Understanding Ghosts and Army Uniforms since 1945 are here stashed between The Law of South Africa, 2001 and a cookbook showing a pair of parsley-sprinkled pancakes. It’s all so wonderfully arbitrary. At home I have schedules that account for every portion of every working day for the next month. I have a wall calendar that accounts for my whole year. Those printed black lines squeeze me. I have to attend this meeting. I have to make that phone call. I have to get a particular book for work purposes. Wanting something can be frustrating – you try to find it, there are obstacles, nothing else will do, maybe you have to order it, there’s a wait, the wrong book’s delivered. In a charity shop’s book section, I want only to be surprised. It’s like playing a kind of fusty version of The Dice Man. Stand in front of the shelves, let my finger drift along the spines, see where it lands – The Practical Fossil Finder, The ABC of Relativity – a future expertise in almost any field could start here. And I get sudden, odd moments of intimacy. Most if not all the books are, of course, used. Despite its inscription in a child’s hand that reads like a plea – ‘This book balongs [sic] to mummy’ – Total Fitness stayed so unread that there are cobwebs on the back. By contrast, a critical study guide to Shakespeare’s The Tempest was so loved that its owner, ‘W. Grant’, covered it in opaque yellow sticky-backed plastic and inscribed it not only on the front page but also down the side. I smile. Reading tends to be thought of as a very private thing. But, whether they’re fiction or non-fiction, some of the best books give you a feeling that you’ve made contact with the author or the protagonist, that you’ve understood them – that they, somehow, have understood you. A 1920s book, Conifers and their Characteristics, states, towards the end, ‘A large sized Araucaria bidwillii is growing at Trebah (Mrs Hext), Cornwall.’ A handwritten note in the margin says, ‘This tree turned out to be a Cunninghamia siensis; Araucaria bidwillii was reported by cousins (1927) as growing at Torquay.’ It’s only a glimpse – of this conifer aficionado turning detective on a monkey puzzle tree – but, however fleetingly, I’ve felt this person’s excitement. With the next book, one ‘Mrs Oakley’ comes alive. Rare Vegetables still has its order slip in the back confirming that it cost five shillings in 1960 and went to her on Naseby Road. I can picture Mrs Oakley standing in her garden, trowel in one hand, and, in the other, packets of seeds of some of these ‘rare’ vegetables. Pokeweed, Scolymus; sweetcorn. Sweetcorn? Something so common now that it can flood market stalls, ‘four for a pound’, suddenly seems strange to me too, a gift, its husk an exotic, papery wrapper. Of course life’s not all slog. I get evenings and weekends. But my sofa at home is not as conducive to reading these days. It tends to get covered with the children’s Uh-gi-oh cards, half-built Airfix kits, shopping lists, screwdrivers. Even if I ever meet the demands of the work schedules, there are so many other things I ought to be doing. It may be for a matter of minutes, but in front of a charity shop’s bookshelves, I can escape immediately. The cover of Training the Roughshooter’s Dog features a man in a peaked cap pointing a gun over a stile. The photo on the front of Yorkshire’s Churches is so clear, I feel as if I could step into its idyllic rural scene. Some of this book’s entries have been circled in blue pen, others are underlined in red. There’s a map at the back – that opens with such a strong, specific smell of wood smoke, I am shocked. My past has jumped me. What’s the scent that’s pulling me in? It’s the wood smoke of Sunday afternoons when I was a child, when a long family walk over the moors would end back home with tea and crumpets by the fire. And the memory’s also about being alone and at the start of something. I’m seeing the far wall of the living-room, which, with its floor-to-ceiling shelves, is covered entirely with my father’s books. Things were different then. Out in the countryside, where I grew up anyway, everyone was a latch-key kid. I often had that living-room to myself, with the biggest distraction the call in the distance of a sheep or a curlew. Aged about ten, I’d stand in front of those books, hundreds of them, all different colours, different shapes and sizes. I could have asked for guidance. I didn’t want it. My father’s bookshelves were strictly ordered, of course. They were arranged alphabetically. But to me, as a child, they felt arbitrary. ‘Ezra Pound’. Obviously he had a reputation, that’s why he was in my dad’s bookcase. I think even the typeface was heavy. ‘Pound’ – as in cost, as in weight; as in ‘pound of flesh’, or, to ‘give ’em a pounding’. I remember standing in front of an edition of Ezra Pound and deciding he was for later. For reasons perhaps to do with the sound of a name, the embossed feel of a title, a cover’s hue, I’d choose. At the point of having eased a volume free of its neighbours, I’d grasp it firmly. The book felt like a handle. I was opening a door, stepping through, to – E. M. Forster’s Italy, Steinbeck’s America, the France of Charlotte Brontë’s Villette. The Canon, books for work, friends’ recommendations – there’s huge pleasure to be had from the variety of books one sets out with purpose to read. But, I realize, now, when life can feel as if it’s becoming a series of doors closing, just to stand in front of a charity shop’s bookshelves transports me. The Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society 1937 and 1938 turns Dagenham, a mess of terraces, into deep countryside through which chaps with names like Sir Gurney Benham and the Reverend Montagu Benton stride to report on tumuli and font-covers before going to inns such as The Three Cups for ‘luncheon’. A clutch of science books assures me that there is a mathematical limit on accuracy. I love Heisenberg for his Uncertainty Principle, quantum physics for telling us that light can be waves or particles depending on how you decide to look at it. In these charity shops, at the bookshelves, faced with, well, a load of paper, I regain that wide-eyed child’s feeling of wonder. I see worlds, universes of possibilities.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 15 © Josie Barnard 2007


About the contributor

Josie Barnard is the author of two novels, Poker Face and The Pleasure Dome, the first of which won a Betty Trask. She didn’t spend all the prize money on books in charity shops, but a fair proportion of it has gone to Age Concerns and Oxfams up and down the country.

Comments & Reviews

Leave a comment

Sign up to our e-newsletter

Sign up for dispatches about new issues, books and podcast episodes, highlights from the archive, events, special offers and giveaways.