Book me.

A book fetish can be a curse at the best of times.


I travelled the width and breadth of America lugging an assortment of soft- and hard covers with me, some of them bought believing that I would otherwise “never see them again” and that this was a “once in a lifetime opportunity” having briefly blocked out all knowledge or recollection of amazon.com and Kalahari.net

The smell of a brand new book beautifully bound, or an old one discovered in the back of a hidden shop and brought to light like a long forgotten poem to an old lover. Each one is a world within a world, a secret to some greater puzzle. What’s not to like.

I can hear the wild call of The Bookshop over the noise of a building site, hear the soft whimper of a discarded novel left lying under a hostel bed like a used-out whore whose services are no longer needed. They entice me.

I returned from the US with no less than 20 odd new collectables. Now when I use the term “collectables” I use it very loosely. I could have picked up “Fearless Fourteen” by Janet Evanovich in South Africa easier than genital warts from the postman yet the lure of buying it at a little shop in San Francisco was too much for me. (Besides for that I was bored and needed something to read you see.)


And so my collection grows. It’s my pride and joy. I love looking at them, running my hands over their backs, categorising them from time to time. They are my collection of orphans, and I am a very proud parent.

During my second week in residence in Stellenbosch I discovered a quaint little bookshop a little out of town that stocked an enormous amount of old Afrikaans poetry books. In high school I was an avid drama student and once a week would attend class with a wonderful woman called Aletta Gericke, an old stalwart of South African theatre with a passion for literature. She single-handedly educated me in South African authors and gave me a love for their work and the sound of it rolling around in my mouth. There they were, a collection of books I hadn’t seen since 1992, all nestled together in a bookcase by the entrance. I simply had to have them, regardless of the fact that I haven’t worked in about 10 months and still don’t have a job and my money is starting to run extremely thin I simply closed my eyes, reached out, took their little hands and told them to come home with me.

We’re friends now. Every morning when I traipse into my office they wave and I wave back. Sometimes I softly caress them, a look of pride glinting in my eyes. Some nights they even join me in the bedroom.

Yes. I believe this is called a fetish people.