My little sister got married last week: a happy day. And my even littler sister brought along some unusual confetti–heart-shaped pieces of paper cut from the pages of old Mills & Boon romances. It’s made by a company called ‘bookish’ which sells all sorts of book-related things–bookmarks, book-bags, literary t-shirts, Scrabble-piece cufflinks and even the occasional signed first edition.

Their website (http://www.bookishengland.co.uk/pages/about.html) spells out their ethos: ‘We believe in the power of books. The power they have to help us change and grow, and the power they still hold over us years and years after they have been read. We keep almost all of our old books; we’re hoarders and we just can’t bear to get rid of them. We love the memories. Sometimes we cut up knackered old books and make something else out of them; a handbag or confetti or a lovely paper-chain of little bookish men. We love handmade, vintage, upcycled, recycled, repurposed, reused and reloved bookish things.’

It’s a curious statement, on the face of it. Can you be both a hoarder and a recycler? Can you love something and destroy it, even if your aim is to turn it into something else? But the contradiction reveals what is often suppressed–that the love of reading is a love of the particularities and peculiarities of the medium, the seemingly incidental details that colour and flavour the experience.

These Mills and Boon books have been destroyed, but what remains of them is very eloquent. Take a look, with mixed feelings, dry voices, maybe a touch of quiet desperation.