Thursday 15th June - Books! Tsundoku!

 I am devouring books at the moment.

I don't usually list what I am reading in my Commonplace notebook, but this month I thought I would... inspired by my 'upstairs' book, 'A Book Of Book Lists' by Alex Johnson

full of 'quite interesting' information. Such as, according to 'Dnld Trmp's' website, 

all of the books he personally authored are best sellers. 

Really? Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, My List.

So far I have completed

Ayala's Angels by Anthony Trollope (Victorian light romantic comedy)

A Room With A View by E M Forster (Edwardian light romantic comedy)

Amongst Our Weapons  by Ben Aaronovitch (re-read) (I love the Rivers of London series)

Murder In Province by T A Williams (fills the time well enough - I read the first two so I knew what to expect. But I wish the dog wasn't called Oscar because I kept thinking he was one of the people in the book)

One Enchanted Evening by Anton du Beke (better than I thought)

and I've started 

Sleeping Tiger by Rosamund Pilcher (1960s light romantic comedy)

All of the above books, apart from the Ben Aaronovitch, have been on offer recently, and indeed still may be, on offer with 'Kndl' for 99p. Less than a coffee and a cake! 

Which brings me to a Japanese word I learned recently; 

Tsundoku (積ん読) refers to the phenomenon of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them. It is also used to refer to books ready for reading later when they are on a bookshelf.

(wikipedia)

At least is they are on the 'kndl' they are not piling up all over the house. This is my current 99p tsundoku library;

The Butterfly Room by Lucinda Riley

Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins Valdez (the book club choice for this month; I am nerving myself up to start in case it is 'searing' or 'heart-breaking' or 'emotional' etc!)

The Bean Tree by Barabara Kingsolver (she has just won a major prize for women's fiction for her latest book 'Demon Copperhead', a reworking of 'David Copperfield, so thought maybe I ought to give her a try)

Sprig Muslin by Georgette Heyer (ever-reliable and fun Regency Romance. I can't remember this one from the title but I will know it as soon as I start. I've read them all - and have a shelf of self-destructing PAN paperbacks dating back to the 1960s which I can no longer read because the pages are so yellowed and friable) 

Sunday 19th February - Book Club date creepeth closer

I shall send an email round the group; our next meeting is in 10 days or so and I need to circulate my suggestions;

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss - creepy story of historical re-enacters rebuilding an ancient (stone age?) sacrificial construction and getting too involved in the rea-enacting

Ghost Music  by An Yu - bewildering story set in China as pianists life slowly unravels as she discovers more about her husband

Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons - much lighter, sharply observed and often hilarious story, about the difficulties for a young woman 'of a certain class' in finding a suitable husband, especially when you are completely financially dependent upon your parents

The Running Hare by John Lewis-Stempel - beautiful nature writing about creating a small traditional wheatfield

and my 'wild card';

I've never read 'The Four Quartets',  four longer poems by T S Eliot.  I wonder if anyone else in the club fancies having a go? I keep tripping across quotations that I have heard before 

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future

And time future contained in time past.

Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless

The river is within us, the sea is all about us

April is the cruellest month

and many more.

I've sent off for a secondhand copy. along some study notes to help ne along

Thursday 24th September - Hello Thursday, my old friend

 I keep meaning to order myself this album

it takes me straight back to university days, playing the cassette that I had over and over again, radio-cassette player jammed between my pillow and the wall as I tried to get to sleep at night. The student in the adjacent room liked his music on loud, and the thump of the bass kept me awake, so I drowned him out with Simon and Garfunkel. It sort of worked - the thunk click of the auto reverse mechanism would jolt me out of my sleep, but not enough to wake properly.

Yesterday and today have been darker days; the summer sunshine has been interspersed with rain, giving the days an altogether gloomier feel.

Although yesterday was brightened up by cards and a pot of michaelmas daisies for our wedding anniversary

Still, I have an outing planned for later today - oh yay - but only to get my flu jab. So added to the complication of how warmly do I need to dress for the day is also factoring access to my upper arm for the nurse's needle. (In the end I chose short-sleeve shirt and warm sweater. And trousers, of course. No need for sniggers.)

Yesterday might have been a duller day, weatherwise, but I finished the crochet blanket that I started in April 2019

I walked into a wool shop in Havant, and was so bowled over by the vitatlity of colour in this yarn, that in the end I bought one of each colourway. I made a granny square from each ball - they accompanied me on our endless treks too and from my godmother in hospital or her house all through the year. When lokdown started I bought some plain blue and bordered each square, and yesterday I finished - every square bordered, all joined up, outside border and all the ends sewn in.  Now what? I do have two more blankets - lap-rugs, really, on the go...  

A book I ordered about the mathematicians and scientists involved in quantam physics has arrived today, a blend of science fact and literary fiction. I bought on the strength of the reviews. I can understand why it got the reviews - the writing is compelling and I keep on reading, but the subject matter is graphic and vivid and fills my head with images that I don't want to see - we are nowhere near quantam physics yet - but it seems that the history of the development of the pigment 'Prussian Blue' interconnects with the holocaust and I'm feeling unsteadied by this because I use that colour all the time. I've set the book aside - I need time to think about it before I read any more. Or don't read any more. 

The list of books waiting to read, and part-read, keeps on growing. At the moment I am partway through

The Man who was Thursday - G K Chesterton

Christ stopped at Eboli - Carlo Levi

The Little World of Don Camillo - Giovanni Guareschi

I Saw Two Englands - H V Morton

On Chapel Sands - Laura Cummings

Understanding the Crucifixion - Fleming Rutledge

Short Stories - In A Gernam Pension, In the Garden - Katherine Mansfield

which is utterly ridiculous. My friend said she was in the same situation and told me she 'had to put a stop to that'. I think I will too.

I am behind on my paintings - I'll get on and do one later today.

Thursday 17th September - I was listening to a radio interview with David Cameron, and there were stills of the interviewer and DC on the screen of my tablet. I was mainly listening for the bit where DC said that he said he got rid of Dominic Cummings twice but he kept coming back.

I went over them with ink later to see what would happen

On twitter I saw this photograph, titled 'My Dad, the stonemason, sharing his lunch with a sparrow'

It was raining yesterday - I listened to Debussy's 'Jardins sous le pluis' while I painted this

Which I quite liked, but I had always intended to go over it once the paint was dry, and I like the drawn on version better.

Hey ho, nonny nonny no,

the rain it raineth every day...

well, no, actually. But it seems like it at the moment... cup of tea always makes things better!

  

         

Monday 11th May - Books I am Reading

Last week, or maybe the week before - who can keep track of anything except bin day at the moment (we just watch to see what the neighbours do regarding time to put out the bin, and copy them) - we watched the film of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society. It was a good film, we enjoyed it, and the characters were roughly as I remembered them fro  the book.

Out of curiosity and because I was 'between books' I thought I would re-read the original.  There were a good number of similarities, and a good number of differences, enough to make reading the book a fresh experience, richer, too.

One thing struck me, and indeed I've wondered about previously. In the GLand PPPSoc, people had very few books, which they read in depth, pondering over the story and plot and people, characters and authors. Part of the charm is the way the members of the, oh, can I just call it 'The Soc?'Good. As I was saying, because the people in The Soc are 'ordinary folk' with just a basic education, their views on Marcus Aurelius and other Giants of Literature are amusing and revealing.

Now me; I'm not like those readers, studying their books in the way that people are exhorted to 'study the scriptures' or whatever their Holy Book happens to be.

I finished The Soc this morning, but I am also part way through;

Charles Lamb's Essays of Elia (because of 'The Soc'),

'The Power and the Glory by Adam Nicholson, a fascinating history  (no really, it is, and Robert Carey, hero of P F Chisholm's Tudor thrillers appears for real, close to the beginning, which I didn't expect) um, er, oh yes, fascinating history of the writing of the King James Bible, which I came across listening to a Radio3 podcast called 'Private Passions' about people and music

First and Last Loves - a collection of essays by John Betjamin, which was recommended in a blog about architecture that I follow

The Crucifixion by Fleming Rutledge - very rich and dense writing on this topic, which I read just a dozen pages at most at a time

The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris, also takes time to read and absorb - the chapters correspond to the months of the year in which the book refers, so that makes it easy to break into chunks of reading

The Almanac by Lia Leendertz, a monthly guide to the year with phases of the moon, garden notes, recipes etc

I saw two Englands by H V Morton, travelling through England in the Summer of 1939, and later once the war had started, describing the countryside

You see what I mean? There are other books that I am reading, or about to read. Most of these books are ones I just dip in and out of; I think I'm going to settle to The Power and the Glory now as I am finding it to be quite a page turner in the way that none of my school history books could begin to match.

But how much of any of the books in the list will I remember in any detail? And why is it that I still feel that I've got nothing to read at the moment?

I sort of blame Kindle for the ease at which one can obtain books. I've taken to downloading the free samples, partly to see if I like the book, and partly to create a list of books that I am interested in reading at some time.

Anyone got any recommendations for when I can;t find something to read? 

   

Wednesday 3rd April - Awake at last

I woke up 'awake' this morning, if you see what I mean. Awake as in 'not-tired', as in 'eyes staying open'.

Now all I have to do is stop snuffling.

I should be sorting out the invoicing for next term's piano teaching, or casting off the blue jumper that I finished last year and then found I wanted it to be longer, so added some more, or sewing up the yellow jumper I finished some time ago, but all these tasks require proper concentration, so I will leave them for a day or so yet.

So far today I have

clipped the cats claws  - a first time for them. I wasn't sure how that would go, but they just looked a bit bemused and confused by the whole process. Leo has been getting her front claws stuck in things - they don't go out enough at the moment to wear the sharp point away.

added some more to the scarf - it now has two rows of  roses (no way to make that sound any better) and a criss cross pattern. I'm just using up the rest of the blue-green colour on a sort of zig zag before I go hunting for a leaf pattern to do next.

done my ten-line drawing - it was going to be just a few lines and lots of space, but then my pen started running away with me.

Last night I finished "The Winter Story" from Brambly Hedge - the series was going to be my Lent reading, remember? Lent was a bit of a non-event this year. If I had read it a week or so ago, it would have been snowing properly for the Snow Ball in the story.

I have downloaded "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine" by Gail Honeyman, for the book club which I didn't go to, and "Iron Hand" by Charlie Fletcher, the sequel to "Stoneheart" which I read last year (or the year before? can't remember when, but the book was excellent)

       

And  read a couple of chapters of Nehemiah which is the book for the Bible Book Club, next meeting on Monday. It is only 12 chapters long, and I am up to chapter 9 so I should make it to the end before Monday.

Gustave Doré; Nehemiah Views the Ruins of Jerusalem's Walls, 1866.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehemiah

Now I need to update the BOOK page on this site, and eat some more chocolate.

Sunday 18th March - Blog Catch-up

robertsoncooper.com

No, not news from home, not yet.

Just that I have moved the book list for this year - read, reading, not started, not even bought yet - from the sidebar of the blog to a separate page.

I've even rattled off a few sentences to excuse, explain, or otherwise comment on them....

culturenl.co.uk

Sunday 4th February - Sexagesima Sunday and Books

Which doesn't mean what some readers might be thinking it means...

It's the Sunday after Septuagesima Sunday (and before Quinquagesima Sunday) and are the Sundays in the run-up to Lent.

If I'm going to take Lent seriously, then I need to be thinking about it before Ash Wednesday. I normally give up Free Cell (that's actually quite a toughie for me, as it is my main way of unwinding after teaching!) and speeding, by which I mean that I pay close attention to keeping to the speed limit, which then lasts me the rest of the year.

They are the basics; I usually add something else. Maybe, this year, it will be the book mountain. As in, NOT buying books through Lent, and donating the book-budget (an as-yet undecided figure) to charity might be a thing to do.

So, here's the pile of books that I am currently reading;

on Kindle;

The Artists's Way - Julia Cameron, nearly finished. I've found this a fascinating program; I haven't followed it exactly, but have got a lot out of pondering the questions and writing theb'morning pages' most days.

A Far Cry From Kensington - Muriel Spark, halfway through. I started this, my first ever book by Muriel Spark, after reading a blog post which described the book as 'almost a manual on How to Write'. I'm finding it very amusing, in a quiet, 'Barbara Pym' way.

Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K Jerome, part way through. I can't remember why I started re-reading this, oh, yes. It was because a description of 'towing' which I read in 'Country Bunch' below made me laugh out loud.

The Diet Myth - Tom Spector, half way through. Interesting investigation of food, digestion, diet-debunking, speculation, gut microbiology.

Letters to a Young Poet - Rainer Maria Rilke, a 'dip in and out book'
Selected Poems - U A Fanthorpe, 'dip in  and out'
Flame and Shadow - Sara Teasdale, 'dip in and out'

and 'real' books;

The Secret Life of Cows - Rosamund Young, part way through. Popular bestseller about - cows. Good bedtime reading. Gently written.

A Monk's Guide to a Clean House and Mind - Shoukei Matsumoto. I'm starting Chapter 2 so it is a bit soon to come to conclusions. The cover is a beautiful shade of blue; a possible contender for the bathroom walls.

Country Bunch, an Anthology - 'Miss Read'. a 'dip in and out' anthology of poems, extracts, diary entries.

On Writing - Stephen King half way through. Fascinating, enlightening, inspiring


And then there's the list of unread books... hey, you might think this isn't such a sacrifice, NOT buying new books for a couple of months. But don't forget, I will have given up playing Free Cell....

Saturday 1st April - Book review 3

The Twentieth Day Of January - Ted Allbeury

This review seems particularly appropriate for today's date - I downloaded this book soon after the results of the American presidential elections were announced. The fictional scenario is that the newly elected president may be a Russian puppet, elected through the machinations of the Communist party. The intelligence services have just a couple of weeks to find out whether this is true before the President-Elect takes office.

Of course this is just yet another 'reds under the beds' spy thriller, written back in the dim and distant past - the 1980s. Pure fiction. Move along please. Nothing to see here.

Sunday 21st June - Reading - "The Invisible Library"

This was fun! (If you like that sort of thing)



Loaded it onto my Kindle a couple of weeks ago. Actually, I finished it a few weeks ago too. It's got everything - alternate universes, dragons, magic, steampunk, faerie, werewolves and even Sherlock Holmes.

Hopefully there aren't any spoilers in that list, and it's enough of a description to encourage the enthusiastic and help the non-enthusiast pick something different!

I'll be looking for a sequel - it's all set up and ready to go.

Saturday 20th June - "Food for Thought"

Or rather, read, come to think of it.

Robert Farrar Capon "Food for Thought"

One of my mother's books - she handed it over to me decades ago, and I have read it before. I remembered the tone of the book more than the content. A dense amalgam of food writing, recipes and Christian theology (Amongst other things he was an Episopalian priest, seminary lecturer, a food writer for "The New Yorker".). He is urging simplicity, and freshness, and seasonality, and due reverence for the way food in produced and treated.

Written at a time (1977) when "food" was in a really bad way in the States, and "modern" cooking involved tins and packets and prepared gloops, by the sound of it. We were married in the Autumn of 1977. as students, pot noodles, baked beans, and all kinds of stews in tins were a mainstay, but we tended to cook from fresh. Cheaper, (our food budget was £10 per week), and better tasting than tinned gloops.

[Pause for  memories of home-made scones (we never bought bread) scraggy lamb and broth-mix stew, boiled fruit cake, flake-meal shortbread, left-over chicken cooked with rice and veg. Tinned mushrooms, because fresh ones were had to find. Small tins of Plumrose ham.Fried eggy bread with marmite. Rice pudding.]

The book is heavy going in places, but some lovely, thought-provoking trains of thought on the nature of Grace and the importance of a sacrificial, mindful approach to the way you live.

I've down-loaded his book "The Supper of the Lamb" onto my Kindle to read in a few month's time.

Tuesday 16th June - Reading (books, not the town)

At school I used to read a whole book every day - on the coach to school, breaks and lunchtimes, on the coach home, in bed at night.

No, I didn't use a torch under the bed clothes. I used the crack of light slipping through the bedroom door hinge, slicing across the carpet from the landing light. Or, more risky, sitting on the loo in relative comfort and full light. If my brother hadn't got there first. You had to stay alert; if you heard anyone downstairs, the trick was to pull the light cord just enough to make the light go off, but not enough to actually switch it off, as the resultant "click" would be heard and you would be caught.

Recently, after a period of hardly reading anything much at all - well compared to how much I used to read - I've started spending more time with books.

This caught my eye in a bookshop when we were in Canterbury last month, and I've loaded it on to my kindle (but not started it yet). It appears to be an amusing account of books read over the year by someone (who?) called Andy Miller.


It has inspired me to start keeping a list of books I've read. I'm going to back-date the project to the beginning of June. And, knowing me, probably abandon it somewhere around the middle of July. We shall see.