Just Sayin’.

After visiting 7 independent bookshops in 7 days for Independent Booksellers’ Week, I’ve decided to take a little break.  This is mainly to give my bank balance time to recover.  But I thought I’d share this little story with you.

Like many of you, I make a point of always having at least one book with me at all times, so that I’m never left without something to do.  But today, I did something a bit dumb.  In addition to the book I’m reading, I put a water bottle in my bag and forgot to make sure the cap was closed tightly.  Ten minutes later I realised I was dripping.  The cap had fallen off and my water bottle had soaked half of my bag, including my book.

This led to a deliciously smug moment.  The spill was a blessing in disguise; my book, of course, was fine after a few hours of drying out and by the time I was reading on the bus later, I realised that the crumpled pages now give off that beautiful used book smell, long before their time.  The pages swell out like the faces on the front cover, as if their stories can barely be contained inside the book.

I’m grateful for the spill because now, I have a perfectly good book whose pages are a little more crinkled and a little more yellowed and which looks, if anything, more loved than it did before.

If I’d been a Kindle user, I’d have no entertainment for the rest of the day and be £199 out of pocket.

Books are tough; they can not only survive, but gain charm, character and stories from their time with even the most adventurous, wanderlusting, absent-minded or accident-prone readers.

Just some food for thought.