Finders, Keepers by Nicholas Royle – #ABookADayInMay – Day 2

As soon as I started reading Kaggsy’s review of Finders, Keepers (2026) by Nicholas Royle, I headed to the Salt website and ordered myself a copy. I think it was probably Karen who also alerted me to his first two books in this series – White Spines and Shadow Lines – and he is, as the The Telegraph puff quote on the cover says, ‘fast becoming the bibliophile’s  bibliophile’.

White Spines was about Royle’s love for Picador books from the 70s-90s, and his hunting to add more to his collection. Shadow Lines had less of a central focus, and went hither and thither in bookish topics – though the title refers to the line visible in the top of a book when it has an ‘inclusion’, i.e. something that a previous reader has left behind, be it a postcard, letter, newspaper cutting or something more unusual.

Finders, Keepers was going to be called Library Fines at one point, so that all three titles would rhyme, but he opted for something less censorious – if perhaps not especially relevant to the contents of the book. The subtitle, ‘The Secret Life of Second-hand Books’, is closer to the mark. It very much continues the themes of the previous book, and I was happy to return to them – Royle is still returning books to addresses written in them, phoning the phone numbers he discovers, and buying books because of the things that previous owners have slipped inside them. Occasionally, he buys books because he wants to read them.

Actually, that’s doing him an injustice. It does seem that he reads widely and with curiosity, and he might be prompted to pick something up because of an eccentric project, but he will usually try the book too – even if he often ends up dismissing them in a whimsically curt way. (He also dismisses bus journeys, people on mobile phones, and an Alpha sign outside a church – that, given his otherwise curious approach to life, I would encourage him to revisit with a more open mind.)

There are as many ways to collect books as there are books to collect.

I was going to type out a long excerpt – starting with that line, then going on to the genesis of his project of collecting ‘doubles’ (i.e. two books with the same title) and how he and the other author called Nicholas Royle are another kind of double. But I love it as an independent thought. And it is the throughline of everything Royle writes in these bibliographic memoirs.

Some book collectors choose their prey based on first editions, fine bindings, and the condition. To me, it is so much more interesting to collect books for the many and various reasons that Royle buys them. As well as the ‘inclusions’ urge, he has sections describing returning library books to libraries (quite a lot of people seem to give their library books to the charity shop?), buying books because they have Christmas messages in them, building a collection of books whose titles start with London, and the aforementioned ‘doubles’ project.

At times, I did find myself thinking ‘Why don’t you just buy books because you want to read them?’ – and I continue to marvel about where he fits all these purchases (particularly since, when I said something similar about the previous book, Royle himself assured me that he lived in a modest home). But, you know what, when I got the section on buying books because there were maps included or sketched in them, then going to the place in the map and reading the book, I was totally won over. That’s charming. That’s the eccentricity of the committed bibliophile that I can get behind. There are, indeed, as many ways of collecting books as there are books to collect.

As long as Royle keeps writing this sort of book, I’ll keep reading them. Our tastes scarcely overlap – though, amusingly, he did read Assembly by Natasha Brown in one day, which I did yesterday. I don’t think I’m likely to listen to any of his specific recommendations, and I doubt he’d want to hear mine. But I still love reading witty, friendly writing from a fellow reader who loves hunting for, buying, and amassing books as much as I do. Another extremely readable gem. The bibliophile’s bibliophile, indeed.