Books

Entry for the ‘What’s your hobby?’ challenge


If anyone asked me when I was a child what my favourite hobby was, I am pretty certain that I would have said reading. I might have said other things as well, but reading would have always figured. My mother used to say I always had my head in a book. I read anything I could lay my hands on. We didn’t have many books in the house, as far as I can remember, but I was always at the local library and borrowing books from anyone who had them. When I was still very young we used to go to visit my great aunt, who had a huge collection of books, and I was allowed to go upstairs, leaving the adults to their chat, and sit in front of a set of bookshelves and just read anything I wanted.

But it wasn’t long before I was actually collecting books. I was obviously not buying new books, there was not enough money around for that, but I used to get books for birthdays and, when I was ‘helping’ at the local church jumble sales, I always came away with several purchases from the bookstall. Later I used to go to second hand bookshops in Bradford and a stall in the market and buy up old books. I know this because I still have some with stamps on from places long gone.

And so I went on reading and collecting books. At some stages in my life I had very little time for reading and I rarely had the money to be a purchaser of anything but paperbacks. However, when I retired I realised that I had time to read and I had enough money to buy hardback new fiction – a dream come true. I just love the whole idea of a hardback ‘proper’ book – new and just published.

For the last few years I have followed the Book Prizes, especially the Booker Prize and I have treated myself to buying many of the books in the longlist and all the books in the shortlist. It may sound like an extravagance, but there are a lot of other things I don’t buy – you can buy quite a few books for the cost of a pair of shoes! Then I challenge myself to read them. The books get passed around the family, as both my daughters are readers, although they have many commitments, which prevent them from doing as much reading as they would like to. It has become a family tradition over the last few years to go to the Shortlisted Authors Readings Evening at the Southbank Centre, London, the day before the winner is announced. We all thoroughly enjoy seeing the authors and hearing them read from their books.

So here is my Hobby Blip on the day the Booker Shortlist was announced. The picture is a tiny section of my book collection; the old ones are just a few of the books that my great aunt left me when she died. The pile in the forefront is the five of the six shortlisted books – one is with my daughter. I am not going to make any comment at this stage about the books, as I have only read three of them. And this is long enough as it is. Perhaps later.
 
   
So if anyone was to ask me now about a hobby of mine, I might say a number of things, such as textiles, knitting, sewing, local history, family history etc. But above all of these my real love is not just reading, but . . . Books.