Black and grey fine script reading I've lived a thousand lives arches above a shaded stack of books on skin, with spines reading HOBBIT and LOTR.

Stack of books with script quote

Lettering · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded stack of hardback books sits centrally, with spines lettered HOBBIT and LOTR, and a script line above and below reads I've lived a thousand lives. The books are rendered in black and grey with soft shading and highlights on the edges, while the lettering is crisp, dark linework. The composition is centred on a plain background of skin, with the text framing the book stack.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

Keep reading

The boxes came up from the cellar on Tuesday, swollen at the corners, and Mr Okafor's lads set them down in the yard as if they were sacks of coal. I have been sorting them since. Most are fit only for the pulp bin, but at the bottom of the third crate I found a stack of hardbacks wrapped in oilcloth that still smelled of the harbour. Two had been read so hard their spines had split like bread crusts. Someone had written a name inside each cover in pencil, and further in, someone else had crossed those names out and written their own.

I took the top volume home and read it at the kitchen table with my coat still on. It was about a small, unlikely man who set off after something he had never asked for, and I kept thinking of old Walter Pell, who came in every Friday for a fresh paperback and never once paid the full price. He told me that a person who reads properly gets to be a dozen people before breakfast. I laughed at him. I'm not laughing now, because the cracked copy had a slip of paper in it, folded small, in a looping hand I half recognised from the order book.

It said: Lived a thousand lives on these shelves. Leave the rest for whoever comes next.

I've put the stack on the counter by the till, spines out, the battered ones on top. Walter's daughter came in this morning and bought the one with the map on the endpaper, and she didn't haggle once. Come up at Easter and you can have first pick, though I suspect you'll want the same one she did.

Love, Nell

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