Shadow Lines: Searching For the Book Beyond the Shelf

by Nicholas Royle

The ‘shadow line’ is a term Royle uses to describe the faint line on the top edge of the text block that allows him to see whether a book on a shelf contains an inclusion – those items inserted into books and long forgotten.

The shadow line is a constant reminder of how Royle started to think of books as more than just the printed stories or information they contain. He is always looking for shadow lines when scanning the shelves of second-hand bookstores, charity shops, hotels, Little Free Libraries and Airbnbs.

He’s no longer only looking for books that are just books. He’s looking for the book that contains a hand-drawn map of an unnamed town in Ireland that he can try to identify so he can read the book while walking the streets depicted on the map. He’s looking for the book that contains a 1957 delivery note for an address in Bristol, so that he can send the book, complete with delivery note, to whoever lives there now and invite them to welcome it back into its former home.

He's also looking, beyond the bookshelves, for books dumped in the street, for books used as props in art installations, for books left on bedside tables in films. He’s looking for books that are Doppelgängers of other books, for books that are named after places (where they might not be set), for books with two-word titles the first of which is London. He’s looking for books that don’t exist.

This follow-up to White Spines, Royle’s instant classic published in 2021, shows his search takes many forms, giving a shape and a structure to this compelling new work, just as the search for the Picadors informed the former. Strange, haunting, comic and poignant, Shadow Lines is the perfect book for those who love physical books and the stories beyond their pages.

Genres: Nonfiction, Books About Books, Literature, Essays

256 pages, Hardcover

Published March 15, 2024

About the author

Nicholas Royle is an English writer. He is the author of seven novels, two novellas and a short story collection. He has edited sixteen anthologies of short stories. A senior lecturer in creative writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University, he also runs Nightjar Press, publishing original short stories as signed, limited-edition chapbooks. He works as a fiction reviewer for The Independent and the Warwick Review and as an editor for Salt Publishing.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book about books. The best kind of book.

A great tour round many familiar book shops. I don’t write anything in the books I own and this made me think that maybe I should. I certainly do leave bookmarks, usually train tickets, inside them and they’re always nice to find when I pick up a book years later.

I bought this book new from Rare Mags in Stockport but I think I’ll make a challenge of finding a second hand copy of White Spines in the local book shops.

[Michael Reilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

"White Spines" was Royle's wonderful book about his obsessive collecting of the white spined Picador paperbacks published in England from 1972 to 2000.

This is a more general book about his various bookish interests. Shadow lines in a book are evidence of something left in the book, a postcard or a picture or a note or a sales slip or bus ticket or whatever. Royle collects books with inserts. He tries at times to track down the original owner of the book. He insists on preserving the inserts in their place in the books.

(Forty-four years ago, I bought a four-volume edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson for $5 at a school used book sale. Halfway through the second volume I found half of an index card with a handwritten list titled "Shopping in London", followed by entries like "licorice" and "scarf". I still use it for my bookmark as I go through Boswell the fourth time around.)

Royle also obsessively tracks books which appear in movies. For example, "for a lot of people the talking point in "Don't Look Now" is the notorious love scene.........I'm much more interested in the fact that on the bedside table, throughout the love scene, there lies a book." The book is Rolf Hochhuth's "The Deputy". It is about the failure of Pope Pius XII to confront the Holocaust. (I have had a paperback copy since I was a teenager. I still haven't read it. Maybe next week.) I share Royle's fascination with background books. Of course, Zoom etc. has massively increased the opportunities for book voyeurism.

Royle also has sections on the influence of Magritte and the surrealists on the "Thomas the Tank" children's books, on his collection and analysis of all twelve volumes of the Penguin Modern Stories series published between 1969 and 1972, and on his walks from bookstore to bookstore and the treasures he finds.

Royle is not after fine collectable rare books. He is looking for unusual rarely seen paperbacks with interesting covers. He drops in small vignettes of the kind of odd, disjointed conversations you overhear in bookstores.

Two things I noticed.

First, Only the odd number pages in this book are numbered. I don't know why. As a creature of habit, I don't like it.

Second, on page 62 Royle describes "customers to rich to be arsed to cross the road." A Britishism? a deliberately funny line? or a very enjoyable typo?

I am the target audience for this book, and I enjoyed it immensely.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great fun and great for any haunter of second-hand bookshops.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Shadow Lines" refer to the tell-tale indication when looking at a book that something might be inserted inside which ordinarily wouldn't be there. Such as a bus ticket, for example. There are no shadow lines in this book, however, as everything within is exactly as it should be. Royle is quietly obsessive when it comes to documenting interactions with books (those beyond the actual reading of them) and this almost clinical precision makes a perfect study of why books are more than physical objects but are gateways to moments past present and future. If you've ever spotted a secondhand book with an inscription and wondered what might have happened to the giver and receiver, if you've examined a faded receipt and wondered what might have been purchased, if you've spotted a phone number inscribed on the flyleaf and been tempted to call it, then this book is for you. It doesn't stop at shadow lines or inclusions, however, there are other musings on the ways that books connect us - often through coincidence. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and it is a perfect companion to Royle's previous non-fiction work, "White Spines." Highly recommended.

[Karen Mace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Books about Books! I love them! And I loved White Spines, which was the authors' first exploration into his obsession with buying books and searching them out across the land, so I've been eager to read more from him, and Shadow Lines is a wonderful follow up!

This continues his obsession with second hand bookshops and charity shops, looking to add to his bookish collection but this time round looks more at those books we've all found on our travels with a scribbled note inside, an address, a map and it spurs him on to a quest to search out those books and maybe ring that telephone number inside, or post a book back to someone to return it 'back home'. I loved the randomness of his journey as he finds himself seeing what he can find on shelves - alongside still looking to add to his beloved Picador collection!

There's also a number of different side topics which keep the book theme going - such as books he sees in movies that he searches out for now and wondering what the significance is, and also the art of reading while walking!! I've seen a number of people do this recently and am now tempted to give it a go myself!!

I really wish I had his recall for details as there's so much information shared be it about a book plot, the author and their background or details from films he's seen. And I also found this book to be quite poignant reading it when I did, as he talks a lot about the author Paul Auster (who I've still not read but will be hunting out his work now!) who sadly just passed away - April 2024.

This was a wonderful read that looks at the journey that each book can take you on, alongside the journey the author went on to find that book and what can be found inside. I'm definitely going to be paying more attention when browsing secondhand books now to see what treasures I can discover!!

[Bookthesp1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fabulous follow up to White Spines with a slightly different spin. In this book the fascination of the author ( and reader!!) is with Shadow Lines - indications that can be seen on the shelf that the used ( they say pre- loved these days - don’t they !?) book has some sort of insert or emphera that’s been left in the book- a photo or receipt or some sort of thing that’s been left in the book- even an inscription/ inc a name or phone number/ location scribbled in the book is a clue to previous ownership.

Nicholas Royle will follow up where possible - phoning a number or if there’s a scribbled address sometimes returning the volume back to its last address.

There are also the delicious accounts of perambulating around different cities visiting bookshops / Has Royle ever totalled up his spending per year ? Granted purchases are often cheap but seemingly so regular he must spend a tidy amount sometimes just because the edition has an insert !!

This is a fabulous entertaining book where this reader is aghast at how meticulous Royle is at following up clues and treasuring his seemingly banal finds but he’s right to be curious about who owned the books and their ownership history since these owners are often fascinating people. This book becomes a volume amongst others on the social history of books and reading/ readers.

Having spent years oddly avoiding buying Paul Auster’s, New York Trilogy ( myriad illogical reasons in my head !!!???) he may have persuaded me to invest in a nice copy - a perfect book according to Royle.

The exciting news is that there is a new book about second hand book buying by this author out next year - “ Finders Keepers” - a must have for me when it appears !!!

Until then Shadow Lines has been a fabulous compulsive read . Highly recommended!!

[Heather McAlister · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was fascinated by the 'blurb' about this book & just had to obtain & read a copy. This is a book for those who love books to the extreme!. Not just the physicality of the books, but their minute details. Nicholas invites us to join him on his walking tours around 2nd hand bookshops and charity shops. I thoroughly enjoyed his discoveries and his curiosity about the 'inclusions' he finds in books and what they reveal about their previous owners. There are times when he has successfully reunited books with their previous owners with lovely outcomes. Nicholas was insightful and open about his obsessional traits and he did lose me at times in a couple of chapters (Thomas the Tank Engine and Books in Films come to mind). I would have loved some images/photographs incorporated as I found myself googling quite a bit as I lacked his level of knowledge.

I have ended up ordering 'White Spines' and some other novels he mentions in his book (so beware). As some of the other reviewers have said, I look forward to another book by Mr Royle perhaps including his search & findings of the grangerised books? If/when I open my own bookshop - I promise not to remove inclusions I find from their position in the book. I felt his pain!

A very lovely journey in which I gained knowledge and spent money! Thank you.

[Paul Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

[Salt Publishing] (2024). SB. 225 Pages. Found on a bench in the beautiful Canon’s Park (Stoke Newington).

Odd pages, alone, are numbered - the book’s title’s repeated atop the opposite evens… so it’s unlikely an ink-saving manoeuvre… perhaps a flimsy stab at being stylistically fly…

A smartarse had crossed out “City”, on page 110, and written “Child”.

This is a joyous, though sometimes fraught, ramble through matters bookish. I was starting to see bibliophile’s jottings as an over-milked udder, not so. Amusing, informative, disjointed, delightful, sad and awash with ‘leads’.

I suspect that the NR would enjoy “Confessions of a Collector” (Hunter Davies).

One hopes for more to come… a ‘Volume 3’…

Perhaps the author will randomly disperse carefully grangerised books into ‘the wild’, with an inscription inviting feedback to a given e-mail address… a wave of 21st century chain letters.

[Sem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, the fascination of someone else's OCD! It might have been a 5 star book but my interest dimmed in the later chapters. At first I was surprised that he would replace hardcovers with paperbacks but I came to appreciate the need when one has a compulsion to buy multiple copies of the same book.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

For book lovers everywhere. Shadow Lines are the giveaway sign in books that there is an insert (usually a placeholder of some kind), and Royle loves an insert! Often of course they are business cards or some such: if there's a number Royle will ring up and talk to the previous owner, if he can. He is delighted when he gets a call from 4 teenage girls who find his number in a book (Man Hating Psycho by Iphengia Baal). Other topics included here are walking and reading (at the same time) - Royle will greet any other walker/readers; the illustrations in Thomas the Tank Engine books; the Penguin Modern Short Stories series (a delight: the teenage me bought some of them when they first came out in the early seventies); and books in films (during the sex scene in Don't Look Now Royle's interest is caught by the book on the bedside table). However the best and most moving bit for me is the A-Z of the late Joel Lane, a mutual friend and a great writer, that Royle read out at the Joel Lane Day held at Voce Books, Birmingham (UK) last year.