Phantoms on the Bookselves

After owning books, almost the next best thing is to talk about them, once said Charles Nodier.

This is a book about books. Jacques Bonnet writes about his private library, comprised of more than forty thousand volumes, about its origins, contents and organisation.

This is also a book about a life built around reading, about the seductive power of books, the joy of a serendipitous find in a second-hand bookstore.

“The love of books, the possession of them, can be thought of as an extension of one’s self or being” says James Salter, “ not separate from the love of life but rather as an extra dimension of it, and even of what comes after.”

If books and reading is a part of yourself, you would love this small charming book, full of witty and vivacity.

Phantom in French, is a ghost but it is also the card that librarians leave to mark a place where a volume has been removed from a bookcase.