A Life Without Books ...

I’m big on books. A life without books would be no life at all. I read every day. I couldn’t imagine a day passing by without me dipping into a book, no matter how briefly. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve never owned a television, there are far too many books to read (plus it’s easier to listen to the radio whilst doing the washing up than it is to watch a TV screen). I wasn’t always this way inclined though. As a child I preferred being read to rather than reading for myself. It was only later on that I began to enter into that solitary yet contented withdrawal which is reading for oneself. That propensity to absorb by listening is perhaps what later lead me towards the study of history and anthropology. And perhaps it’s also why I prefer the radio to the telly – they do say, after all, that you always get better pictures on the radio!

Not everyone is keen on reading. I once lodged with a friend who was far more interested in outdoorsy-type pursuits. I remember her incredulous exclamation as she returned one frosty Sunday morning from a bracing off-road cycle ride up and down the Chiltern Hills, only to find me several hours later sitting in exactly the same position on the sofa, cosy indoors with the same book in front of me. “You haven’t moved!” she exclaimed. But I’m sure I’d travelled just as far in that space of time as she had, except in a different way – with each turn of her bicycle’s pedals matched by the number of pages which had accumulated under my left thumb.

 

Needless to say, being such a devoted reader, my flat is stuffed full of books. But alas the space for an ever growing personal library is finite. The bookshelves I’ve set up here are groaning under the ever-accumulating weight. Nearly all the flat surfaces in my home are simply abhorrent vacuums which have swiftly been filled by piles of pages – books, magazines, off-prints, TLSs, academic journals, notebooks, guidebooks, dictionaries, etc. Given the limitations of space every-so-often necessity prevails and I have to thin my library down. This always poses a deeply difficult dilemma: Which books should make way for new acquisitions?

I attempted this task only this morning in fact, and was rather surprised at the outcome. I managed to clear a small swathe of tomes from a shelf which meant a stout pile that had recently accrued on the desk nearby (and which, very inconveniently, was preventing me from actually using my desk) slotted neatly into the vacated shelf space. My surprise wasn’t so much at the apparent neatness of this act of rotation, it was rather at the act of negation – Why was it, I wondered, that only now could I envisage living without these particular books which had once been deemed so important and integral enough to my life that they should have taken up permanent residence on my bookshelf? What had changed? Was that prior importance simply relative? Had I lost interest in the topics they were centred upon? Had I realised that other books in my collection covered the same subjects such that these ones were now redundant? … In this particular instance, I realised my re-classification was essentially based on what might best be described as ‘associative memory.’

As I scanned the rest of my shelves this realisation began to sink in more deeply. It struck me that most of the books I own, and particularly those books I’ve owned the longest, are in some way or another ‘associative tomes.’ In my mind, I don’t just simply recall them as being particularly good reads, although invariably this is almost always the case too; but moreover, I associate these specific books with people, places, or particular times in my life. The book may have been given to me by a dear friend or relation, or it might have been inherited from a certain family member, or it might have been bought or read in a particular place whilst travelling or at some other significant phase in my life. It dawned on me that reading wasn’t simply confined to what the words within those pages said – more often than not, when scanning the spines of those titles which I’ve already read, I realised I could almost without fail recall where I’d bought or been given the book, and also where and when I’d first read it.

As such then, I began to perceive that my library is caught in a constant ebb and flow of change. It regularly builds and reduces itself. It is continually being re-categorised and refined. Time and sensibility as much as utility and space are the main factors which regulate what is retained and what is lost. In essence my personal library is my life in the sense that it acts as a kind of mirror to my memory. The books of greatest value are not simply those which are or might be most useful to me either now or potentially in the future, but they are also those which are most important to my past and my-previous-selves as well.

Alberto Manguel has written a wonderful book which is a meditation on libraries – inspired by his own library, which he has lovingly lodged in a 400 year old converted barn in France – The Library at Night (Yale, 2005) is a paean to books, book-collecting, and the act of reading; examining the use, nature and representation of libraries throughout the ages across the world. Opening the front cover I see I’ve written my name at the top of the title page in pencil with the note “Tokyo, 2011.” I didn’t really need this aide-mémoire as I still distinctly recall buying this book at the big Kinokinuya bookstore in Shinjuku’s Takashimaya Times Square (over the years I’ve spent a small fortune there). I also distinctly recall devouring the book in the warm evenings over the course of a week or so that particular summer. Since bringing it home to my flat in the UK I’ve evidently not been the only one to keenly ingest this particular book as the tell-tale gnawing of a silverfish can clearly be seen on its spine (a literal ‘bugbear’ of my library as it’s currently stored in my flat is that it seems to regularly draw in these ancient gnostic little critters!). 

Wherever I go I always seek out libraries and bookshops. I’m particularly drawn to secondhand bookshops, as these are the places where one is most likely to find rare and unusual treats as readily as finding discounted treasures. This habit began whilst I was still at Sixth Form College, when I regularly used to take myself “up to town” to spend a day scouring the old bookshops along London’s Charing Cross Road as well as the famous ‘Ripping Yarns’ bookshop in Highgate. Many of these shops, as with the equally enthralling old bookshops in Greenwich, have sadly long since disappeared. Yet thankfully, there are still a handful of good secondhand bookshops still to be found in London; and, just as in my Sixth Form days, I still visit these regularly in order both to bleed my wallet and better insulate my flat for winter.

On a recent trip to Delhi I passed along a book market lining the street whilst making my way to the famous Red Fort, but it was in the small multi-level labyrinth of ‘Bahri Sons’ in Khan Market that I found the kind of books I was looking for. Likewise, I’ve found similar bookish enclaves in other cities too, such as the Bras Basah area of Singapore and Tokyo’s Jimbocho. I’ve spent a lot of time and a lot of money in Jimbocho over the years, particularly when I was living for a time in Tokyo in 2009.

One of my favourites there is ‘Kitazawa Books,’ which is excellent for obscure academic titles as well as old Penguin paperbacks up on the large upper floor. I bought a wonderful old hardback copy of The African Queen by C. S. Forester, which had previously belonged to the library of the USAAF in Yokohama or something similar (sadly, despite the fact I lovingly restored the dust-jacket myself, the book never made it home to the UK with me). I also bought a gorgeous old paperback of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American there, which I read whilst travelling through the Mekong Delta in Vietnam that summer (which happily did make it back to my bookshelf here in London).

Another favourite there is ‘Oshima Books,’ which is particularly good for paperbacks as well as English literature and literary criticism. A pristine copy of Everyman’s 1000^th title – The Metaphysics by Aristotle bought from here, as well as Basho and the Dao by Peipei Qiu, plus a little book on Grammar by Frank Palmer, and Conrad’s Romanticism by David Thorburn (which I read twice, but also never made it home either) stick in mind from there – as does my memory of the lady who runs the tiny little shop from a desk perpetually buried in books at the back, always wearing a worn-in looking old apron and fingerless gloves.

I wouldn’t be so surprised if other people felt the same – that books are bound up with time and place as much as they are with the self who collects and reads them. Books are much more than the tales or topics they tell. Books are a part of us, and just as I know I will continue to read everyday until my eyesight goes or I go, I know I will always continue to seek out libraries and bookshops – in the hope that one day I too might find my own ‘Cemetery of Forgotten Books’ as in Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s novel, The Shadow of the Wind, or Umberto Eco’s forbidden library hidden within the monastery in The Name of the Rose.  And, just as with Jorge Luis Borges’ labyrinthine Library of Babel, I shall continue to reshuffle, as well as reject and replace tomes from my own library as my memories of reading reconstitute themselves and settle down into the rhythms of constant re-classification which my life prescribes – like pebbles on a beach being shaped by the surge and pull of the tide. As time permeates and accrues through all the thoughts and feelings which I’ve derived from (or invested in) all those many pages which have so quietly accumulated in my left hand, so too my library is both the mirror of me and the world I have travelled. Indeed, this is why – for me at least – a life without books would be no life at all.

 

Further Reading:

Reading Matter & Matters of Reading

The British Library - A Paradise of Pages

3 Little Known London Bookshops

Read my reviews of recommended bookshops in Taipei, Taiwan & Portland, Oregon for the LSE Review of Books

Haw Par Villa - Singapore

“We have to go here. This is a place you simply must see. It’s hilarious!”

Gingerly clicking on the link my colleague had sent me, I wasn’t so sure. 

Even as we approached the main gate several weeks later, I still wasn’t so sure. But I was certainly curious enough to give it a look, and the rest of my colleagues were game. Happily, entrance is free - so with plenty of time to kill, we’d nothing to lose …

It turns out he was right. It is so bizarre you really do have to see it to believe it. Initial impressions weren’t great, I have to admit. The prospect of seeing a run-down park filled with oddly artless concrete sculptures wasn’t an altogether edifying one. But seeing is believing, and you really do have to see this place to believe it. 

Built in 1937 Haw Par Villa in Singapore was once the family estate of the Aw brothers. Their father, Aw Chu Kin, was the creator of the famous ‘cure-all’ ointment known as Tiger Balm. It’s a kind of cross between Deep Heat and Vicks Vaporub, mildly anaesthetic with a comforting sort of eucalyptus scent (it’s very good for easing muscle aches). Originally the brothers, Boon Haw and Boon Par, after whom the Villa was named, used the fortune they made from Tiger Balm to set up a zoo in the Villa’s grounds (the park was originally one of three set up to promote Tiger Balm, the other two being in Hong Kong [now closed] and Fujian in China). A later change in the licensing laws of the colony compelled the brothers to replace the animals with a bizarre menagerie of statues instead, many of which are arranged in static-theatrical tableaux which range widely across a spectrum spanning the deeply moralistic to the outright surreal.  Many of the set-pieces illustrate episodes from Chinese folklore and Taoist mythology, such as the titanic battle of the Eight Immortals. A very dilapidated little hall made up to resemble a winding cave-like tunnel passing through a small cement-rendered mountain houses the ‘Ten Courts of Hell,’ where amateurish dioramas illustrate extremely gory scenes of wicked prostitutes being drowned in the “filthy blood pool”, or where ‘tax dodgers and late rent payers’ are pounded with mallets – it’s not quite Hieronymus Bosch, think rather of the ‘London Dungeon’ meets ‘Bekonscott Model Village.’ 

It’s disturbingly naff. Hence at this point I still wasn’t sufficiently impressed enough to take any snaps, but emerging into the daylight again things began to alter and shift as we progressed up the hill. 

The dioramas began to grow in size, and whilst some were in distinctly neglected crumbling states with peeling paint (it was hard not to think of a forlorn forgotten seaside town, or some other such ruined dystopia, the original for Banksy’s Dismaland perhaps), others had been or were in the process of being patched and tarted up again with fresh licks of paint. 

Some of these concrete creations were truly stunning and discombobulating in equal measure. A couple of scenes had me roaring out loud with laughter and that was it – the odd magic of the park had set in. I now had the giggles. 

It was like wandering around in our own half-deserted version of Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, a tropical Margate gone hideously wrong … My colleague was right, it was curiously hilarious.

I got my camera out and began snapping ... 

The T'ang Shipwreck - Singapore

Sometime around 830-840 AD a merchant ship set sail, most likely from the Chinese port of Yangzhou, or perhaps from Guangzhou further south, following a well established maritime trade route through southeast Asia, via Java, towards the Arabian Gulf, where it was probably heading towards Basra, then the principal port of the Abbasid Caliphate, in modern day Iraq. The ship was carrying a large cargo of ceramics – some 70,000 pieces were tightly packed inside its hold, along with other, more precious goods such as finely crafted items of gold and silver, plus 29 bronze mirrors, as well as more perishable commodities, such as spices and probably textiles too (silk was certainly used as a currency at this time). However, the ship never reached its intended destination, as it was wrecked en route in the Java Sea, some 600 km south of Singapore.

The wreck was discovered in 1998, not far from the Indonesian island of Belitung, by fishermen diving for sea cucumbers. Given that the wreck was located in shallow waters and less than 3 kms from the shore it was very vulnerable to looting and accidental destruction, consequently the Indonesian government authorised a salvage company to recover the 9^th century ship’s cargo. This recovery operation took place over two seasons. The importance of the wreck, despite its having been subject to commercial salvage rather than a more scientific programme of archaeological excavation, was noted and hence, in order to preserve the assemblage as a whole, the cargo was purchased by Singapore with the purpose of making it available to the peoples of the wider Southeast Asia region in a public museum. Accordingly, the contents of the wreck were first put on temporary display at Singapore’s Art Science Museum in 2011 (you can read an interesting and thought-provoking review of that exhibition, and the controversial issues surrounding the original acquisition of the wreck’s contents, by Rachel Leow on her blog here and here). Now, nearly five years later the Belitung shipwreck has at last found its final berth in a new permanent gallery at Singapore’s excellent Asian Civilisations Museum. This new display was opened to the public last month by Ms Grace Fu, Singapore’s Minister for Culture, Community and Youth. I was lucky enough to be invited to the opening ceremony. 

For anyone visiting Singapore who has an interest in art and archaeology, the Asian Civilisations Museum is a must-visit site. Built in 1865 the Neoclassical building, which originally housed the offices of the British colonial government, has recently been undergoing a transformation. Last month saw the opening of the first of the Museum’s “New Spaces” with the T’ang Shipwreck gallery as its centrepiece. The shipwreck is clearly being showcased as an important marker for modern Singapore’s 50^th anniversary celebrations. As one of the texts accompanying the display attests: “Singapore lies between two oceans, along a busy sea route running from the Middle East to India, Southeast Asia, and China. This network rivalled the more famous Silk Route through Central Asia. Glass was brought from the Middle East, cotton from India, spices and wood from Southeast Asia, and ceramics and silk from China. These economic ties led to the exchange of artistic ideas, and to contacts between peoples of different cultures.

            The Tang Shipwreck reveals that Singapore’s region lay at the heart of a global trading network in the 9^th century. The success of Singapore as an exchange point of global shipping thus has ancient roots. The beautiful objects of exceptional rarity testify to the ingenuity of artists and merchants, and show that exotic objects have long been appreciated by the world’s consumers.”

Paeans to ancient precursors of modern consumerism and political agendas aside (see here for a recent article on maritime archaeology and modern day nationalism), the actual analysis of the antiquities recovered from the Belitung shipwreck has revealed some fascinating information. It is claimed that “not a single nail or dowel was used to construct the ship,” instead it was made from wooden planks which had been sewn together with rope made from coconut husks and caulked with wadding and lime. Scientific tests have shown that the wood came from Africa, and that later repairs were made in a variety of materials sourced from other far distant places, such as India and parts of Southeast Asia. All this suggests that the ship was a dhow, plying a trade route of immense distance from the Arabian Gulf to China, returning with a cargo which gives us a window onto the commercial web which networked the Abbasid and Chinese Empires together, most likely via the maritime hub of Palembang, the capital of Srivijaya in Sumatra (Java) – arguably the Singapore of its day.

The ship’s cargo attests to the almost industrial scale of output from certain Chinese kilns of the period, particularly that of Changsha in Hunan province, of which, some 57,500 pieces have been recovered from the Belitung wreck. Plus highly prized celadon wares, green-splashed wares from the Gongxian kilns of Henan, and beautiful white-glazed wares from the Xing kilns of northern China, all of which have also been discovered at other sites in Asia and the Islamic Middle East. Many of these ceramics were packed into larger ceramic vessels, tightly coiled and padded out with straw, these jars contained up to 130 bowls each. This method of packing was highly successful and undoubtedly also ensured that many of the ceramics remained preserved intact on the seabed. In total the ceramics from the ship weighed around 25 tons. 

 

Many of these bowls are now on open display in the gallery, but why they have been mounted on long metal stems making them look like a large abstract field of poppies, or so many plates spinning on poles, is a modern design mystery which no one I asked could fathom. Thankfully the displays and accompanying texts give adequate context and explanation. The spacious gallery is light and airy with large windows looking out, rather appropriately, onto the waters of nearby Boat Quay, where on my first visit I saw dragon boat races being held. I’m told that once all the redevelopments are complete this area will become the new entrance to the Museum, hence the T’ang shipwreck will be the first gallery the visitor encounters.

The rest of the Museum is filled with a wonderful array of artefacts from many different cultures and wide-ranging regions across Asia. The sculptures of the Ancient Religions room, including several pieces from the ancient cultural crossroads at Gandhara (in modern day Pakistan), such as the magnificent monumental terracotta head of a bodhisattva with a mass of curly hair, are not to be missed. Plus, the two Southeast Asia rooms are crammed with such a variety of fascinating treasures that I became completely engrossed and lost all track of time. The room dedicated to the “Chinese Scholar” is an exquisitely evocative new addition to the Museum too. I’m looking forward to returning next summer to see what other transformations will have taken place by that time.