It was one of my absolute favourite books, first read at an age when I hadn't previously encountered the name Penelope and pronounced it to rhyme with antelope. Although traumatised by the fate of Anthony Babington (no spoilers here - he was a real Elizabethan) I was completely drawn in to the extraordinary world of Thackers, and used to emerge from reading sessions feeling slightly dazed by the modern world of a noisy family house. I must have read it many many times over the years, and it still conjures the same feelings, scents and flavours in my head. (Can a book have a flavour? If not, what's the word for that brain-hangover a book leaves?)
Sadly, like many well-loved paperbacks of its age, it has now fallen apart, and an almost identical version is in print, so I have bought myself a new one:
I'm now wondering what to do with the old one. I could just toss it in the recycling bin - after all it is, in the cold light of day, just a bundle of rather brittle old paper.
Being me, actually I can't do that. However, having purchased a new copy, I have no need for this one, and what's the point of letting it gather dust on my already overladen shelves when I'll probably never open it again, except to muse over it in a nostalgic kind of a way?
So here's where you come in. I'm considering taking the book apart to re-use some of the images or text. Have you ever dismembered a book in this way? It feels like destruction, but if I choose something that feels positive and creative there could be a phoenix-like quality to the things I create. Your ideas please, for the best way to make good use of these pages, and beautiful illustrations:
Should I fill one of those multi-windowed picture frames with the images? Or set small pieces of text or drawings under resin to make jewellery so I can remember the book while I wear fragments of it? Other suggestions? What do you think? What would you do?
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