I’m late with the ‘stack this week. I’ve had a busy week with things around the house, plus a two day trip to my home town—more of which later. And there’s no audio this week, sorry!
Welcome everyone to the weekly thoughts and chat about life and stuff. A big welcome to new subscribers—it’s good to have you with us.
After the recent ‘stackstorm around that much talked about post that argued ‘No-one Buys Books’ and the flurry of rebuttals that came after it, I was taken by the gentle and thoughtful question posed by Anne Boyd Rioux’s post which asked ‘why do you buy books?’ It was a gift to think about, and much of this week’s post are those thoughts.
Why do I buy a book? What motivates me to part with my cash to own a collection of printed pages? A good question. I buy books because I like the cover, I like the author, it's a subject that interests me, it's part of a series I'm hooked on, it's going to teach me something, it's about history, it's about murder, it's biography, or if it’s going to help me be a better writer and reader, if I think it should've won a prize but it didn't, it's a well-written cosy crime, it's 'Golden Age' crime, it's by a mid 20th century female author, it's about books or libraries, it's about writing or reading, it's recommended by someone I know shares my tastes, it's a new take on an old story. I want to keep it on my groaning bookshelves, part of the replenishment of a diminishing TBR pile, I want the anticipation of it rising to the top, I want to sniff the pages, read the acknowledgments BEFORE I start the book, feel the texture of the cover, run my fingers over any embossing, flick through the edge for heft and assess the comfort for holding to read in bed; so many things add to the joy of actually reading through it. I could go on…and on.
I don't buy them if it looks like 'chick-lit', if it's written by a celebrity that I've usually never heard of or never engaged with on any other media, if it's hyped beyond hype, if it's by someone I read once before and thought it was crap, if it's a 'bandwagon' book (so many), if it’s likely to be explicitly violent for no reason other than to shock, if it’s pseudo-science or overdone on the ‘self-help’ front, if it doesn’t ‘speak’ to me from amongst all its surrounding fellows, encouraging me to pick it up, read the blurbs.
No end of reasons really for buying or not buying, some rational some less so. I don't read on screens, but I will listen to audio. I like to own books, to look at them and choose something to reread that I know will be perfect. I keep books I really enjoy. Books that are okay but not great get passed on or go to the charity shop straight after reading. I NEVER put a book in the bin. If I am loving a book, I turn down corners, left or right, to mark place. I annotate if it’s not going to break the rhythm of reading so annotation is usually in non-fiction. I keep a book journal starting each January where I write a summary and give stars. I read about eight books a month. I binge buy when my TBR pile of fiction and/or non-fiction is less than 6 books high. I binge buy when I visit favourite bookstores/websites. In the UK, really special ones are Little Toller in Beaminster, Persephone in Bath, our local Winstone’s in Sidmouth that has the funniest and most accommodating staff, even Waterstone’s in Exeter—not that I’m keen on using the huge, independent-stiflers but I do love that feeling of being surrounded by more books than I could possibly read, three floors of them, on well-lit, packed shelves and piled on tables, and that heady feeling of not knowing where to start. I haunt charity shops for the old, green Virago Modern Classics and always snap them up, no matter what they are - I know they'll probably be my kind of book.
On reflection though, the most important reason for buying books is that I have to read. To be, for a while, in someone else’s life, someone else’s story, with a whole new circle of friends and acquaintances, back stories and incidents. To be finding out about the lives of the great and the good, to be in another part of history, exploring great events. Broadening and deepening my knowledge of something, or time, or place, or finding something new to be interested in and read about. I buy books because I’m a reader. It’s as simple, and as complicated, as that.
Here is my list of April’s completed reading. There may be one or two things here that appeal to you:
Our Spoons Came From Woolworths by Barbara Comyns - A tragic tale with an ultimately happy ending. A young couple, mismatched and totally unprepared for married life and parenthood, struggle to live their lives. Comyn’s at her quiet, unemotional, observant best.
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing - our bookclub read for April. I found it a trial, a really challenging read. A novel of fragments and about fragmentation - of relationships, of social mores, of politics, of life. It’s an important book of its time (the sixties) and lauded for its thematic explorations, a classic even. I found it wordy, intense, overblown, irritating. I didn’t enjoy it at all, and was only too pleased when it was over.
The Medici Murders by David Hewson - an entertaining crime novel, with embroidering around historical facts. Set in Venice, intelligent and clever, it took me a while to work out who the guilty party was and still kept me reading to the end.
The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly - unless you’re an Erin Kelly fan, don’t bother. I gave up about 25% through. I picked it up on a whim and wished I hadn’t.
The Skin Chairs by Barbara Comyns - another semi-autobiographical novel from Comyns, written from a child’s perspective, which she does so well. A family is thrown into disarray when the father dies, taken in by ghastly relatives they manage to keep going as the child grows up. There are some wonderful set-pieces in here, beautiful cameos, as innocence, as is usual in Comyns, falls by the wayside without judgement or sentimentality. A happy ending saves the day, and the ghastly relatives get their comeuppance too. Loved it.
According to Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge - A sensitive fictionalisation of the relationship between Samuel Johnson, the great writer and lexicographer, and his friends the Thrales. Intimate and insightful, Bainbridge gives us an oblique look at Johnson at the centre of his circle of friends and companions, literary and social. We see a difficult man loved, a man flawed and awkward but nonetheless supported with affection and care by those who love and respect him. Through it all there are letters from Queeney, Hester Thrale’s daughter, written in later life, with her recollections (or not) of life with Sam. I had forgotten what a great writer Bainbridge was. Here she often uses the third person to write about Johnson, foreshadowing perhaps, the way Mantel wrote about Thomas Cromwell. I loved this book, and recommend it.
On Thursday I went to my cousin’s funeral. The first in my family of my generation to die. It was sad, but the humanist service was simple and uplifting. Her husband of 50 years, and her sons spoke words of humour, memories, and great love. She had requested no flowers from anyone other than the family’s informal arrangement on her wicker coffin, no black, no hymns or prayers. Photographs of her smiling her wide-mouthed smile at various stages of her life were shown as a continuous background. None of them showed her with other people. Just Mary, head back, mouth open, laughing at the camera. As she was in life. She also had left instructions that anyone who wanted to should take a flower from that family arrangement and take it home and remember her for a while. That way the flowers weren’t left to wither away at the crematorium. What a lovely idea. The whole thing was an inspirational way to say goodbye. It was a 400 mile round trip for us, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. She was just lovely, and her thoughts were for those she left behind right to the end. RIP Mary. Oh, and her husband and her boys had chosen Bruno Mars ‘Just the way you are (Amazing)’ over more photos of her laughing right at the end and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house—not from sadness, but from love and pride and happy memories. I hope someone sees me off so thoughtfully…actually I think I shall do what Mary did and leave very specific instructions…
That’s all for this week. I’ll write soon.
x
Hey, you write with such immediacy and brio when you talk about reading. Thank you for such a spontaneous start to my day.
I laughed at your comments on The Golden Notebook. The thought of reading it in a book club [not my scene at all] seems surreal…I had an image of worthy conversations about politics and womanhood [which, I guess, might have made Lessing raise an exacting eyebrow because I am a man]. She is held up as an important voice, and I do think she writes well, but there is something a bit of the self appointed seer [or I get a sense of that…so, who knows, it might be all me and nothing to do with her…] that I find too ponderous.
And yes…funerals are a thing, aren’t they. I used to dread them, and I seem to have been to them all through my life, but now I think they are important and helpful. Far worse is not having one: a friend has recently died and did not have a funeral of any kind, and everything is left unresolved and unmourned…or the mourning will take longer without the jolt of the funeral to make her death real.
I have too many books and plan to do a weed soon. However some I have had for ever. They will stay and be read again. - and again.........
Reading about your cousin's funeral re-iinforced how important these events are. I forever give thanks that we were able to deliver a beautiful and memorable funeral for my mother last year.
This year I have attended three or four funerals. The hardest was for a 21 year old, but still beautifully and memorably done.