My eyes slide along the spines and I'm confident there must be a good half dozen I can hoick off the shelf and into the charity box, and yes, look at that big tatty red one with the broken back that I know I have never read. So out it comes and I see that it's called A Tramp Abroad, and I'm just about to drop it in when I remember that Mark Twain wrote that, so I look at it again, because, you know, it's Mark Twain, and I'm thinking it's probably a 20s edition, only it s ays 1881 on the title page, and I'm impressed because that makes it 129 years old, so now I'm looking at it with completely new eyes because the centre of each spread is like a time capsule of smells and textures from the reign of Queen Victoria, and the font is archaic and the drawings are delightful, and who cares if it's falling apart? And then it occurs to me that it might be a British first edition, so I take it over to Google it and inevitably this means I start reading it too, but there's no time, so back on the shelf it goes, and it's not so much that the shelf is as full as it was before, it's like it's fuller than ever.
Phew!
Now look me in the eye and tell me you're different:)
