Finders, Keepers by Nicholas Royle – #ABookADayInMay – Day 2

As soon as I started reading Kaggsy’s review of Finders, Keepers (2026) by Nicholas Royle, I headed to the Salt website and ordered myself a copy. I think it was probably Karen who also alerted me to his first two books in this series – White Spines and Shadow Lines – and he is, as the The Telegraph puff quote on the cover says, ‘fast becoming the bibliophile’s bibliophile’. White Spines was about Royle’s love for Picador books from the 70s-90s, and his hunting to add more to his collection. Shadow Lines had less of a central focus, and went hither and thither in bookish topics – though the title refers to the line visible in the top of a book when it has an ‘inclusion’, i.e. something that a previous reader has left behind, be it a postcard, letter, newspaper cutting or something more unusual. Finders, Keepers was going to be called Library Fines at one point, so that all three titles would rhyme, but he opted for something less censorious – if perhaps not especially relevant to the…