I became a collector – for a while, at least – because of libraries. At least I think that was the reason. I was a library kid. I never owned books. I started off at the children’s library, which I remember as two shadowed rooms, a bit of light streaming in through the shutters, a stern librarian keeping guard at her desk, shelves packed with books reaching up to the low ceiling. You had to whisper when you were inside, and the smell of the books was that of a jungle: a sweet-rotting smell that is both death and renewal.

Or maybe I’m just being fanciful. By the time I graduated to the adults’ library, I’d read every one of the books on the children’s shelves at least once. I wasn’t discriminating. The great thing about kids is that they don’t discriminate – they can’t – and so they read everything, only later figuring out if a book was any good or not. At the time of reading, it simply doesn’t matter. I read them all and wanted more – but when I think about it now, I realise I never owned a book.

Book collectors know – or so they tell themselves – that they are not the real owners of a book. They are keepers, guardians, temporary custodians of their collections. Books come into a collection from somewhere – someone – else, and will be moving on sooner or later. Book collectors talk of provenance the way art collectors do. Such-and-such book came from the collection of so-and-so. It has the bookplate of the previous owner, who was the king of Mexico (true story, that). To come from a prominent collector’s collection can enhance the value of a book. Collectors like to think of their death, at which point their collection will be put up for auction. They like to think of “their” books ending up in someone else’s collection with a little notation beside it: From the collection of… or Previously owned by…

Perhaps all collectors begin from the simple lack of owning anything to call their own. I doubt it, but it is probably true in my case. As I moved on to the adults’ library, I also began periodic trips to the nearest town where you could buy books (books that were not in the library) and then return them for half-price. I would buy five or six at a time, read them, return them on the next visit. Second-hand bookshops, in many ways, act as lending libraries – still do, for that matter. I’m still doing this today.

I don’t know when the need, the desire, to own a book of my own became manifest. Just as when I began to read, I wasn’t choosy. I bought used paperbacks that looked like a dog had chewed on them (and probably had). But, for a while, they were mine, and only mine. I put them on the shelves, rearranged them, looked at them. It was only later I became fussier: hardcovers, limited editions, even new books (from time to time). The question, perhaps, is why, and I think I have an answer, of sorts.

Limited editions, by themselves, are not particularly worthy of note. Neither are first editions. Most books published, it has been noted elsewhere, will only ever be first editions. And for a small-press book, a print run will always be severely limited.

Yet the books that I truly love – as physical objects, rather than reading material – are the ones that have been made out of a sense that a book is more than what is inside it. That, on its own, it is a work of art. I still own, for instance, a limited edition of one of R.D. Wingfield’s Frost novels. UK readers might recognise Frost as the name of a long-running television series. The programme was based – very loosely – on the novels of which there are only four. A few years ago someone decided to release one of them in a limited edition and, being a huge fan of the books, I pre-ordered it immediately. The book, when it came, was gorgeous. I still have it, and it still isn’t worth much more than I paid for it, but you should see it. Not that it’s particularly fancy. But it is printed on heavy, acid-free paper, bound simply and beautifully, and when you hold it in your hands you know this book will last, will outlive you, that it is meant as a sort of messenger to the future, a time-traveller that time cannot touch.

Or maybe I’m just being fanciful again. These days, the majority of my own collection has dispersed to other collectors, other lives, and once again I visit second hand stores to exchange worn paperbacks for more reading material. Perhaps I’m wiser, perhaps just poorer, but damn it – more than anything I miss that smell.

Lavie Tidhar writes weird fiction. This is his web site. He grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and lived in South Africa and the UK. Most recently he’s lived in the Banks islands of Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, one of the most remote and isolated places on Earth. Lavie’s website is http://www.lavietidhar.co.uk/.

In 2007, Apex Publications released a collection of Jewish adventure stories titled HebrewPunk from Lavie Tidhar. This book is available as a direct order from the Apex Store and from the Apex aStore.