WHITE SPINES
CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK COLLECTOR
Novelist Nicholas Royle is a book obsessive’s obsessive, with a collection of 959 Picador paperbacks dating from 1972 to 2000. Bookblogger Bookmunch was impressed: ‘How obsessive can you be? Nick has reserve collections of Picador books that are either the wrong size or colour, the B and C list. A trainspotter of the earlier meaning, Nick is obsessed with recording his acquisitions. But he is not interested in monetary gain from his collecting. He is a keepercollector, a hoarder of the tribe.’ Fellow blogger The Quick and the Read also approved of his thriftiness. White Spines ‘explores the bookshops and charity shops, the books themselves, and the way a unique collection grew and became a literary obsession. Above all, it is a love song to books, writers and writing.’
Ian Samson in the Spectator also warmed to the unpretentiousness of Royle’s grand project. ‘It’s not exactly a history of Picador, though we certainly learn a lot about the imprint, launched by Pan Books in 1972 by Sonny Mehta. Nor is it exactly a memoir, though there are plenty of details about Royle’s time as a student and his work for Time
Out, his teaching and his running of his own small press, Nightjar. There’s mention of a divorce, a new relationship and children — all subtly tipped in, or interleaved, in chapters about various Picadorrelated matters, including descriptions of book covers.’ White Spines is, wrote Alexander Larman
in the Critic, ‘idiosyncratic and enjoyable’.