‘Unread, they taunt me’
Miriama Kamo’s bookshelf
Iread everything in sight as a kid; I got quite desperate if I ran out of books. This was rare as I was a regular at the local library where I withdrew the maximum of 10 books each visit.
One moment stands out. I was about 9 when I went into my parents’ study and dubiously appraised the ancient encyclopaedias and dusty collections of 18th and 19th century writers. I discovered the grim Dickens, the glum Austen and the scary Brontes. It was quite the education. Up until then, Grimms’ fairy tales comprised the most terrifying of my reading but they were at least softened by the notion of them being fairy tales. Here were seemingly “real life” horror tales. I love them still.
The growing up of me as a reader was Pounamu Pounamu, by Witi Ihimaera. The 12-year-old me was blown away. I “got” it and recognised the people, the settings, the arguments, the jokes: I even tried to write in the same style. After that came a wave of other Kiwi writers — Sargeson, Mansfield and Hulme — but it was Janet Frame who refined my appreciation of writers. She is still a touchstone, her advice for writers is perfect and perfectly written: “A writer must stand on the rock of herself and her judgment or be swept away by the tide or sink in the quaking earth: there must be an inviolate place where the choices and decisions, however imperfect, are the writer’s own, where the decision must be as individual and solitary as birth or death.”
However, I’ve not always read the luminaries. My mother, a regular at second-hand stores, let me fill plastic bags with Archie comics and romances of the Mills and Boon ilk. Titillating but never titillating enough: the heroes always fell on to a bed and then woke in a haze of happiness or despair the following morning. As a teen, Jean M. Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear came as quite the shock.
Perhaps the most outrageous literary crime I have committed is, with quivering hands and wobbly knife, to have carved a tome into three pieces to make for easier reading. I won’t say which book it was, but this revolutionary act (because it was suddenly made both manageable and shareable) sticks with me because I have revered books all my life.
We own hundreds of books. My husband, an even more avid reader than me, organises them alphabetically by author for fiction and uses the Dewey Decimal System for the rest. Yes, really. They line the walls of our lounge. I’d take a photo with them except that a renovation has seen them put into storage. I dream of creating the perfect shelving system and happily consider them both evidence of our good taste and extra insulation in our hitherto draughty villa. I always have a pile of books next to my bed, too - most of these small towers are either partially or completely unread, they taunt me, reminding me to sideline the screen and pick up the pages.
Miriama Kamo is a TVNZ broadcaster and author of The Stolen Stars of Matariki; illustrated by Zak Waipara (Scholastic NZ, $18).