Because I'm a reader, I wrote four long-copy ads about reading. We asked an illustrator to do it on spec, and he crafted this beautiful illustration. Beautiful but impossible to read as a narrative. This idea finally got made by my brave colleagues at Saatchi for their brave client Wordsworth Books and was awarded a Silver Eagle at the Eagles Print Awards in 2011. This is the original copy.
The Special Shelf
All books are different . One tells you “Hey, I'm Fried Chicken”. So you binge, ignoring bloodshot eyes like the cancer warning on a cigarette pack. Another asks for exquisite care. These are the books which change you. And with the last word sealed by back cover, you weigh this wood-thing in your hands, the thoughts still alive inside you , knowing to keep this one from garage sale, storage or charity shop. This one is for The Special Shelf. And as the book ages, the insights once so shockingly new mellows in your head, makes friends with your established thoughts. When you open it years later you find them settled, integrated with the regulars, the characters unpacked. And it feels like visiting the house you grew up in.
Opening a book is like starting a relationship
You enter prepared to invest time, effort, and a certain fidelity. In return you want some kind of enrichment. “Happiness” even? One of two things happen. 1) Page 50 rolls around and you find yourself estranged by sentences like irritating statements by a partner. You long for other words like other bodies. You give it the old favorite “It's not you, it's me” and you're over and out. But it's ok because at least you gave it your best shot. OR you hit "True Love" or as close to it as you will get. As you become more engaged, with every page it just gets better. Love exists, the chick-flicks were right! With every word the book turns itself to gold right there in your hands. You ask yourself how is it possible you didn't meet before, all those lonely nights you had to endure. And then you say “It doesn't matter because I have you now, like the vow says, to have and to hold.”
A little flash
Sometimes while reading, your attention escapes the page like a canary flying the coop. But you're still fluttering over the words, landing here and there. And then it happens. Pop! Through the eye and into the brain for a delicious synaptic explosion like a chocolate fudge ice-cream headache: A shiny new neural pathway forged in a brain scuffed by television: A combination of words put together just so. You marvel at the fact that you’ve spent 38 years on this earth and consumed a couple of million word combo's. But never this one. THIIIIIISSSS OOOOONE. Nothing less than a sentence-sized revelation. And you are grateful to the creator. And the world is new, for a minute or two. And you carry on, believing there will be more flares in the darkness.
The lender's dilemma
Own a good book and live on a knife edge: You want to force all your friends to read it. You want to clamp their heads in a vice and prop their eyelids open and sneak around with the eye drops and say. "Read that sentence. THAT SENTENCE! BOW DOWN AND WORSHIP!" And then one day, the request hits the fan: “So, that book you're always talking about, I'd love to read it ...” Dot dot freaking dot. You smile, but in your head you're doing a frantic credential check of this scumbag posing as your friend for the past 15 years. Somehow you always knew it would come to this. You shouldn't have snitched. But then you find yourself lying with a scary sincerity. “Someone else has it right now but I'd be happy to lie lie and lie some more.” You find that at some point you committed to these pages bound by glue to protect it from the jam-fingers, spine-benders and smudgers who call themselves family and friends.
