Ann Donald

To read a book for the first time is to make an acquaintance with a new friend; to read it for a second time is to meet an old one, according to a Chinese saying that got me thinking…

Friends, like books, should be ‘read’ more than once before you can know whether they have any meaningful place in your life. One of my closest friends is someone I met when we were schoolgirls together 35 years ago. An extremely affable, entertaining person, she is also intensely private, and even though I think I know her well, after all these years she still has depths within her that I’m only just beginning to see.

In this, my friend is like the finest book – a classic: a quick read at age 15 introduced me to the charm and spontaneity of a great character who quickly became a friend. Subsequent readings every few years after school and into adulthood, exposed the structures that hold her surface story together and revealed the subtleties of thoughts and emotions that give substance to our friendship.

Not every book or acquaintance bears this kind of scrutiny, and even when they do, the reading of them is not always comfortable. The best of books and friends will challenge the way you think, will demand attention from you, will keep you up at night, and become a voice in your head when you least expect it – and not always kindly. They will also wait patiently for you when the rest of your life distracts you, knowing that their place on the bookshelf of your life is assured.

Alongside this friend are others without whom my bookshelf would be empty. Each of them is a genre in herself: there’s the drama script – a woman of colour and passion and courage who takes life and shakes it for all she’s worth. The page-turner is someone I love meeting for coffee – we gossip and laugh and talk about our children and she makes life fun. My motivational/self-help friend is one of immense sincerity, concerned about the wellbeing of all around her, always there with a helping hand, and is loved by all who know her.

My bookclub is a veritable library of friends. In the non-fiction section, there’s the current affairs bestseller, challenging the world’s inequalities without fear and with deep integrity. She sits alongside the compassionate biography – a woman who bears witness to the stories of many who can’t tell their own, who asks questions and remembers the answers (and who inspired this column). The huri-guri section is well represented by the holistic lifestyle manual and the organic gardening bible.

On the fiction shelf, we have a foreign translation – a vibrant Italian novel filled with stories of food and family. At the moment, our off-beat eccentric novel has transmogrified into an off-beat eccentric parenting guidebook who punctuates book crits with breast-feeding, but she remains an exceptionally good read. The mystery novel in this collection is a bit of a hybrid – she has great literary and friendship merit, as well as being something of a mentoring manual, and wouldn’t be out of place in the psychology section. And finally, there’s the compendium – a collection of essays on everything from cooking, to art, to reading and writing, all presented in a beautifully designed dust jacket.

In looking at these well-read ‘books on my shelf’, I realise they are all signed, first editions, some of them at least 50 years old so maybe not in immaculate condition, but of irreplaceable value, and definitely not for sale.

This column was first published in the Sunday Times Lifestyle on 9 May 2010.

Copyright: Ann Donald