She was in the kitchen making tea, and I was left alone with the spines lined up in her living room. Books always feel like an invitation (or a dare?). Some were leaning against each other like they’d been that way for years. Others stood stiff, untouched, like new arrivals still waiting their turn.
I told myself I’d just look. But then I slid one free. Paper against paper, that soft sigh. Inside: faint pencil marks, a sentence underlined with a little note, the ghost of a thumbprint where she might have paused. Not a secret, not exactly, but perhaps something I wasn’t meant to see.
There are countless moments like this in literature. Victorian novels in particular could never resist their letters and diaries. Some of the most intimate scenes in fiction aren’t grand declarations, but the smaller recognitions that come from looking too closely at another’s books, another’s margins, another’s choices.
There’s a touch of voyeurism in it. Not scandal, but the hush of reading lives that we don't own. Reading is private, and to glimpse another’s books is to trespass lightly into their inner rooms. Even the books we keep waiting, our TBR piles, hint at who we are. What we’re avoiding. What we hope is still ahead.
Reader, I shouldn’t have peeped. But I did. And I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
PS. And now I’m curious about you too. If you’d like to let me peep without guilt, send me a photo of your TBR pile (reply to this mail or email info@thestorystation.co.za). I’ll share a few in a future letter, and one reader will receive a R300 voucher.
If you share your photo on social media and tag us, we will give you 2 x entries to take the prize.