Shelfies #2: Kieron Smith

My relationship with books is a complicated one, they are my bread-and-butter as a bookseller, some of these I see very much, as Ruskin described, as books of the hour, the books which are ephemeral and temporary. I have collected a lot of books – these being some of them – the books I keep (thousands) are those which are now embedded in my soul somehow. It’s tempting to ground myself in history with a touch of spine or hold a book out in defence, its pages containing precious wisdom expressed better than I ever could. 

On this particular shelf is an anonymous slim green volume (right of the showier Count Fathom by Smollett) – sadly I can’t remember where I picked this up, it is a copy of Milton’s Areopagitica (Oxford University Press, undated) – which if ever I was asked to swear an oath on a book this would most likely be the one. 

I also like apparent bibliographic disorder, when your days are spent with hierarchical classification then books in no apparent relation are a welcome relief – I can’t stand the fashionable nonsense of colour or size order, but each to their own. These books make sense in my head, pirates, Morris, Marx, consequently I remember where all the books are in the house by lateral-thinking-location.

One final set to highlight on this shelf is the best edition ever produced of the Mervyn Peake Gormenghast novels – you can see the card slipcase with Peake’s sketch of Titus on the spine (Penguin, 1971). Publishers over the years have often replaced Peake’s own illustrations, which in my opinion is madness – they’re perfect. This set I ‘inherited’ from my parents as my enthusiasm for the books when I was young was such that it necessitated ownership. Peake’s use of language, and the ability for the book to just about contain it, is astounding, and from an early age these did much to impress on me the power of the medium.

Kieron is a career bookseller with 30 years in the trade. As well as selling books, he has a PhD in Organisational Democracy from the University of Winchester, has written a book on The Politics of Down Syndrome and fights with swords.

Shelfies is edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin. If you are interested in sharing a shelfie, please let us know.