Tuesday, 18 October 2011

My Stationery Fetish

I wrote recently about my word fetish - how's yours going, by the way?  Are you filling the OED with lots of spurious words like I told you to?

Well, words aren't my only fetish.  I also have a fetish for stationery.  

Of course it matters very much what is written on paper, but how much of buying books is to do with the feel of it?  When I was a teacher we were conscious of the importance of books as sensory objects.  The feel and smell of paper is just as important as the words in getting kids reading.  And what is true for kids is undoubtedly true for the grown up variety.

There is nothing more seductive to me than fresh smooth pages in a book.  This is why library books - and I'm not knocking libraries for a moment, I'm too scared of librarians - are never as satisfying as buying a new paperback.  Old books can't seduce us like new ones.  

And in my case it's not just printed books.  From my youngest years I've loved notebooks too.  Those little glossy red Sylvine memo books were my idea of heaven.  I've recently discovered Moleskines - not made from moles after all, but never mind - and they have that satin sheen my fetish lusts after.  What is it about clean new paper? I wish I understood.  

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

("...well I never..." went the goblin admiring the well written blog entries now, continuing "...yes, her writing is getting better and better, but the trick now is write the originals here and then repost them carefully across the forums, simply instead of waiting to people to turn up now, one takes the show on the road...", yes the goblin was quite mad but as with all madnesses it was rooted in a certain perverse logic now)