Phantoms on the Bookshelves

Jacques Bonnet (publisher, journalist, art historian) tells us at the beginning of this little book that his personal library encompasses more the forty thousand volumes. So, you might think, the guy has a lot of books: so what? Weirdly, what follows is possibly the most interesting book about books - what it means to buy them, own them, read them, collect or lose them - that's been brought out for a good long while.

Bonnet is an avuncular companion, spectacularly erudite and always entertaining: you'd know he was French even if you had no idea the book was translated. He takes you on a rambling jaunt through pretty much the whole of world literature, from the letters of Fernando Pessoa to the Floating World writings of Kafu Nagai, from the Church Fathers to the mystery of Captain Ahab's whalebone leg. Along the way we're treated to musings on library management, cataloguing, and the passion of collecting. It's all fantastically witty and entertaining - and reads, sometimes, like a tantalising index of all the books you'd love to read and haven't got around to yet - but there's a deep seriousness here too. However shyly, Bonnet is writing a  memoir of a life lived passionately in and through books, and making an apologia for the book as material object that occasionally sounds as if it could be a funeral elegy.

He ends with the long history of book-burning, from the Library of Alexandria to the Nazis; and we're left in no doubt as to the threats posed to the book's future, or the seriousness of Bonnet's dedication to their survival.