I mentioned Dear Farenheit 451 (2017) by Annie Spence in one of my Weekend Miscellanies a while ago, and a bit later a review copy came through the post – whether or not the two things are related, I’m unsure, but thank you to the publishers! Books about books are always, always welcome, and this made a nice book to read on a little solo day out to Stow on the Wold and Charleston House (a National Trust property). Sadly, two secondhand bookshops have closed in Stow since I was last there – but another has opened.
Dear Farenheit 451 takes the form of Spence writing little letters to many books. Some of them are books she’s loved at different times of her life – from Judy Blume to The Time Traveler’s Wife – while others are books that she’s shelved or discarded in her job as a librarian. The last section of the book is all about book recommendations – either ‘if you like this then try this’, or books that pair well together, or other things of that ilk.
I really enjoyed reading it. Her bookish enthusiasm is evident, and I loved that she wrote about an unusual and personal selection of books. True, I had heard of relatively few of them and read a tiny amount, but I’d much rather this than another list of Best Books Ever with all the expected candidates.
It seems churlish to wish it were a slightly different book than it is – but I have to admit that I would have preferred it if it were less sweary and (I can think of no other word for it) vulgar. ‘As sh*t’ – without the asterisk – is used as an amplifier all the time, for instance, and I suppose the whole tone shook me out of my 1920s mindset.
But that’s a small price to pay for this level of bookish fun. It’s not a set of thorough literary analyses, or even unthorough ones, but it is a fun, lively look at the different books that surround Spence for one reason or another.