Read it and keep

Hell hath no fury like a Guardian-reading reader scorned, it seems. Given headlines like "Reading is precious. But the cult of book ownership can be smug and middle-class", the right-wing press clearly doesn't have a monopoly on provocative clickbait.

The author of the article in question, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, felt that she'd been thrown under the bus by the sub-editor (a complaint I've made myself, to be fair), and the headline has since been softened ("Reading is precious - which is why I've been giving away my books") - but let's look at the substance of her piece.

The evidence is pretty damning. She does indeed refer disparagingly to "the cult of book ownership" as "smug and middle class", and critiques the "contemporary tendency" of "having a lot of books and boasting about it, treating having a lot of books as a stand-in for your personality, or believing that simply owning a lot of books makes one 'know things'". Does anyone really do this? In her head/world, perhaps.

What's more, Cosslett mocks those who "treat books like totemic, magical objects". Well, they are, to millions and millions of people - many of them neither smug nor middle class.

Even trying to engage with Cosslett's argument is difficult. Owning books is not hoarding; if she wants to see hoarding, I'd have taken her to my mother-in-law's house shortly before she moved out and the house clearance crew swept in. Hoarding is a cupboard full of out-of-date cans of soup that couldn't be accessed because of the years of clutter piled in front of it.

There's also her implication that owning a lot of books - especially books you've never read or will never re-read - is profoundly selfish and deprives others of pleasure (as though there's a very finite number of books in the world), and that giving books away is a grand philanthropic gesture. ("I choose to donate mine to places where there are people who can most benefit from them"? Now THAT's smug...) For someone who acknowledges the value of libraries, Cosslett doesn't seem to consider the possibility that collectors might loan out their own books. There's little I enjoy more than enthusing about a recent read and being able to lend it out - though I also love being able to reach up and pull books off the shelf for reference.

If ever I have to have a "book pogrom" (and it does happen from time to time), it's very much reluctantly and under duress, as it is for Will Self. You won't find me gleefully slinging books into a skip any time soon - or broadcasting about it in a national newspaper.