If you are looking for a quirky, attractive holiday gift
for the bibliophile in your life, then Bantam Press (who very kindly sent me a
review copy) have just the thing for you in W.B. Gooderham’s gorgeous, Dedicated to…, a collection of
inscriptions found inside some of the second-hand books in his collection.
Mr Gooderham starts from the premise (with which I
wholeheartedly concur) that books can be the most personal and effective of
gifts. He writes:
“The right book given to the right person at
the right time can work wonders. Spirits
can be raised and horizons broadened; broken hearts can be mended, old flames
rekindled, friendships reaffirmed. A
book can say Sorry, and Thank You. A
book can say I miss you, I love you, I forgive you; I never want to see you
again.”
Personal inscriptions
only add to the personal nature of books as gifts and, as Mr Gooderham points
out display a deep sense of human connection, running the full gamut of
human emotions and provoking curiosity about the situations that lie beneath
these messages.
Physically, Dedicated to… is simply lovely. As well as having a textured and beautifully
decorated cover, the pages are photographs of the books from which the inscriptions
are taken and the messages themselves, accompanied by transcripts where the
handwriting is difficult, all printed on high quality paper stock. If nothing else, the book looks stunning.
As for the contents? Well, put simply, the whole kaleidoscope of
life is written here, in message form.
Love, lust, hatred, family relationships, humour, pathos, hope and fear
all manifest themselves as do relationships of all shapes and sizes - parental
and filial love, new romances straight and gay, marriages and deep, longstanding
loves.
There are puzzling
choices, such as the individual who presented his love with a copy of 1984 and the message:
“This book was published in 1949, it was
about the future 1984. I have given it
to you with love in 1994, the start of our future.”
One wonders what future
he was anticipating with this gift.
And there is Hetty, who
clearly had mother -daughter issues, presenting her mother with birthday gifts
of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,
a tale of a Soviet prison camp, and Words
by Jean-Paul Sartre (with a cover quote,
“I loathe my childhood and all that remains
of it…”).
There are men whose
messages of love leave me in awe of their eloquence and precision, such as Tom,
who inscribed a copy of The Arabian
Nights thus:
“To my dearest Sonia. We’ve had our own 1,000 and 1 nights of
marriage - more or less. Three years
already! I still discover things about
you I love each day, or rediscover: your constancy, your generosity, your sense
of justice. I count myself a happy man
to have found you, and I hope it lasts as many years as we can count. I love you, Tom.”
I could go on and on,
sharing the many gems from this volume but that would be unfair to the author
and to you so, I will leave things with a strong recommendation that you buy
this book and one of last example from it - a father inscribing in a copy of a song
book, entitled Bawdy Ballads and
containing gems such as The Sexual Life
of the Camel:
“Mum says it is disgusting: I say it may encourage
you to learn the piano. Mum & Dad, Xmas
1989”
Simply splendid.
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