Just before Christmas, we met up with my lovely sister-in-law and her husband. He'd come to Melbourne to see Wagner's 16-hour opera The Ring. But they'd also come to Melbourne to buy books. Lots and lots of books.
This bibliophilic vacation is a bi-annual pilgrimage for them. Once we all made a road trip to the annual Clunes Book Fair in search of hard-to-find and vintage titles. (Well worth the drive. Even Malcolm Fraser was there. Although I doubt he was digging through the same boxes as we were.)
Anyhow, although this divine duo are both lawyers, they don't just throw their money at glossy bookshops and front-of-store displays. Oh no. That would be too... easy.
Instead, they search out the dusty old secondhand bookstores with the creaky old floorboards; the places where the sunlight fades the window displays and the elderly gentleman keeps his favourite first editions behind his desk so nobody else buys them; the places where boxes of books (and usually a library ladder – always a sign of a good bookstore) block your way as you're shuffling down the narrow gap between towering timber shelves.
These are the bookstores they love. These are the bookstores they browse the most.
Earlier last year, I called them for some legal advice regarding the Garden Tour. (I eventually had to pay lawyers to keep everyone's money safe in case the travel agency dissolved or was sold, but won't go into that here.) Being family, they generously didn't charge a fee, so I thought I might buy them a book as a thank-you gift. But what you do buy two barristers whose library is so enormous, so much like those glorious old bookstores they frequent, that it's now threatening to push them out onto the street?
Then I found this: a book about books.
Thames & Hudson's sumptuous new release The Library: A World History by James W.P. Campbell and Will Pryce.
NB The Huff Post has a great article here.
And The Telegraph has a great read here.
If you're into books, this is a book to buy. Although many of the libraries are grand designs with priceless titles, their beauty – and their obvious devoted to books – is still apparent. It is one of those books you flick through time and time again, shaking your head at these magnificent tributes to the printed page.
But not all of it is gilded grandeur. This was my favourite photo: a snapshot of a group of bowler-hatted gentlemen browsing a London library after a Blitz bomb had destroyed the roof.
Don't you just love them? What dedication.
And then there was this: The Tripitaka Koreana of the Haeinsa Temple in South Korea. This is one of the oldest and most remarkable collections in the world. The items on the shelves are not books, but wooden printing blocks – more than 80 000 of them. Set high in the mountains, the library's cool winds have helped to keep these blocks in perfect condition for more than 800 years.
The Baltimore Library was profoundly beautiful too. Don't you love the way it soars to the heavens? It seems to go up and up and up. It's almost an spiritual experience, really. A cathedral of books.
As you can see, it's a very good book. So we've decided to purchase a copy too. If only we could find one. The book was so popular at Christmas, it's virtually sold out.
Let's hope Thames & Hudson have decided to reprint it.
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