BIBLIOMANIAC

A British bibliophile takes the occasion of the Covid-19 pandemic to fill his shelves even more.

While out shopping for books, BBC radio presenter and comedian Ince writes, he carries two bags, and “I have to buy books just to make sure the weight is equal on both sides.” It’s a nod to the Japanese concept of tsundoku, surrounding oneself with unread and probably never-to-be-read books. When the lockdown restrictions eventually began to lift, Ince resolved to mask up and visit 100 or so bookshops around the U.K., giving talks where invited while filling his totes. He does a neat calculus about how much time he’d have to spend on stage to pay for a book: At his hourly rate, he reckons, a book for which he paid 6.50 pounds “has paid for itself it I read from it for thirty-two seconds.” Of course, he could buy a steak instead, but the author is a bibliomaniac through and through, wandering through dusty stacks to buy strange and outdated medical texts that allow him to differentiate “between fistula and papillomata, water brash and dyspepsia.” Most objects of Ince’s quests are similarly offbeat, though he’s a sucker for a good horror story and a slim novel—slim because after 209 pages his attention span begins to falter, making Anthony Burgess’ The Pianoplayers, at 208 pages, “exactly right.” Ince braves the mean streets of Cardiff, the back stacks of Canterbury (reciting naughty Chaucerian bits), and of course Hay-on-Wye, about which he concludes, “there are too many books….It’s hard to experience that victorious gazelle-hunt sensation when you are surrounded by so many, as it dampens the sense of victory.” The author earns kudos for honesty: He recognizes his addiction, confessing not that he wants a particular title but instead, as in one venue, that “I still manage to find two books I need to buy.”

A charming addition to the rewarding library of books about books.