Okay, confession time. My name is Grace, and I am a pretty bad book collector. And not just any book collector, I’m one of THOSE book collectors. The kind where you find yourself buying yet another copy of a book you already own because it’s a DELUXE EDITION, GUYS, or has all new content from the author, or has a limited edition cover, or is a limited run reissue, or… well, the list goes on. My room is full of books. So full, it can be kind of hard to find room for anything else. And yet, I can’t stop myself from buying more. And I know quite a few of them are duplicates: I have three copies of Wuthering Heights, for example, and the same number of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber. Usually there’s a good reason for this (or at least that’s what I tell myself). With The Bloody Chamber, one copy is my old college paper back, lovingly (and heavily) annotated and beaten to a pulp. The next is a beautiful Folio Society hard back with slip cover, so you can see why I just HAD to have it. The last is the recent Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition released this year in commemoration of what would have been Carter’s 75th birthday. The cover was so gorgeous I nearly died.

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I justify each duplicate to myself with increasingly convoluted excuses. Well, my Nan gave me that one so I can’t get rid of it. That one’s part of a set, so I’ve got to keep it. That one is a Waterstones exclusive edition with a new author introduction, so it’s practically a whole new book. I’m a sucker for a pretty cover, or new “previously unpublished” material, or anything numbered: basically, anything that isn’t your basic run of the mill paperback I will covet instantly. I fetishise books. To me, it’s as much about the object as what’s inside them. I’m not a big Susan Hill fan, but when a new hardback edition of The Woman in Black came into the bookshop where I work I seriously considered buying it because it was just so pretty. While I own an e-reader and completely recognise the practicality and beauty of being able to carry an entire library in your bag, not to mention how enabling they are for visibility impaired book lovers, I will never be fully converted. I would always rather have the physical object, rather go into a bookshop and be able to handle the books I’m buying. Imagine a world where you couldn’t go into a bookshop and just BROWSE. No thank you. I’m one of those weirdos who sniffs her books. Not to mention if I get one with good paper: I freaked out a woman sitting next to me on a delayed train out of London once by lovingly stroking the pages of the Oxford Classics edition of Tess of the D’Urbervilles because I suddenly realised how good the paper quality was. So smooth. So pretty.

Both my parents are book lovers. My father, whose eyesight is poor, is a total e-reader convert, but my mother rallies against them, believing firmly in the power and beauty of books as objects. She also worked as a bookseller years ago, and introduced me to all my favourite angry women: Fay Weldon, Angela Carter, Emily Brontë. We have always discussed books, picking them apart in detail, and sharing our ever growing collection of paperbacks, and her love of reading is, I believe, a massive part of why I love it so much. However, even she can’t understand my obsession with book collecting, my willingness to part with (relatively) large sums of money to buy books I already own because it’s a nice edition. My mother is a practical woman, more interested in the stories than what binds them. So I can’t blame this quirk on her. No, this is me, 100% my weird obsession. However, it’s not one I can see myself giving up any time soon. I’m off now. If you need me, I’ll be in Waterstones.