Time travel

     " 'Do you remember this?' Caroline asked Hugo. 'The Golden Bough. You read it to me when I was sewing for Deirdre before she was born. It does conjure up Viyella and feather-stitching. And discomfort. I used to twitch so and get a sort of toothache in the ribs.' "

    That passage from A Game of Hide and Seek caught my eye; its point about a book's bringing back a specific time and place and sensations, even, is exactly what we were talking about in this post of a few months ago. The scene from which those lines come is one I'm sure we're all familiar with in our own lives: the sorting of books and the strong reminders of past events that many volumes can hold within their pages (a facet which can add another dimension to the de-acquisition process). It could be the bookplate which records the winning of a school prize, the inscription which marks a special gift from a friend, or the letter, ticket or receipt that's been tucked inside to keep the place, any of these could form the association, or as with Caroline and Hugo, it might be the circumstances surrounding the reading of a book which give it a significance far beyond the story itself, and the power to take you back in time.

Comments

[Mr Cornflower]

There was a gap of a couple of years between leaving school and going up to university, during which I read voraciously, mostly classic novels. I well remember reading Pickwick Papers while sitting in a cheap pre-Ikea chair, my feet up on the open windowsill of my bedroom looking down the Devon valley where my parents still live, lost in a different world.
And Cornflower has I think already mentioned being read MR James' ghost stories and invariably falling asleep...

[yvonne]

Somewhere in the depths of our loft, I am sure there is at least one Enid Blyton book, which invokes memories of a childhood, where every spare moment was spent reading.

We have a set of BCA red leather bound classics sat on our bookshelves, which were one of the first things we bought as a married couple. Most of them, I am ashamed to say, have never been opened, as they were just there for show as a matching set.

[m]

I've never enjoyed being read aloud to; even as a child I preferred the voice in my head. But so often books are imprinted with memories of where I read them. (Some volumes will always carry the winestains of holiday reading!) And I nearly always remember where I bought a shabby, secondhand book. Although, having said that, I can't for the life of me recall the provenance of a copy of South Riding that I pulled from the shelf this evening, wondering if I might re-read it in advance of the TV adaptation.

[Barbara M.]

This is not a reading memory, but the scene you've quoted brought this experience to mind.

I have a sweater that I knitted during a very sad time for me.... I had just miscarried for the second time in a year. Knitting was the only thing I could do..... couldn't read or watch TV or talk about it. (Remember when a miscarriage was never spoken about in polite company? You were just supposed to get on with it and buck up.)

I hated that sweater, and never wore it.... it just brought back all the sad times and sorrow, even after my 3 children were safely born and growing up, I couldn't wear it. But I can't throw it away either..... it takes me back to that time when all I could do was cry for my little ghost babies, and knit.

[Aussie Girl]

I thought of this very thing when I saw The Owls Service mentioned on the site. It brought back memories of reading it as a very young girl in hot, dry dusty Australia. I remember not fully understanding the landscape I read about and also the terror the book induced in me. I certainly remember listening to the radio as I read in a feeble attempt to allay my fear.