Tuesday 10 July 2018

Rediscovering Reading

Hello.  Thank you for dropping in and thank you to those of you who commented on my post about Mary Jones.  I am thrilled to learn that her story spread so far across the world and that some of you still remember it.  I would love Disney to make a film about her, but I can't see it happening, can you?!  The weather here is still scorching and my lawn has turned into a spiky, yellow thatch but looking on the bright side, no growing means no mowing!  I am not very good in hot weather, my energy levels collapse and I hide away indoors, looking for the coolest place.  If the cellar weren't full of "stuff" I would be down there, in fact, during the very hot summer of 1989, when I had hardly any "stuff" and was very pregnant, I spent a considerable amount of time sitting down there in the cool, reading. 
 
I have loved reading for as long as I can remember and have always had plenty of books.  As a child I had a bookcase in my bedroom and those who know me well know that a thoughtfully chosen book is always received with delight at Christmas and on my birthday.  Being "a reader" is one of the things which defines me.  However, over the last few years my reading mojo ebbed away and I slowed right down.  In 2016 I read only four books - they were quite hefty, the original Cazalet novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard, and I enjoyed them all very much, but only four.  Last year was even worse: I read two books, not even hefty ones.  That's all.  They were both very good and I read them quickly, carving out extra time for reading because each time I put each of them down, I was desperate to pick it up again, but after I finished the second one in June I didn't pick up another book for the rest of the year.  I just didn't fancy it.  I really can't explain what happened.  Not reading felt odd - for who am I if I am not a reader? - and I was ashamed of myself, so I didn't tell anyone that I had stopped reading.  Kind people, unaware that I was no longer reading, continued to give me books for Christmas and for my birthday, my mother continued to pass on to me books which she had read, and I continued to buy myself second-hand books which caught my eye (I didn't buy new ones because I had stopped reading book reviews as well) and I was very happy to welcome all of these books into my home because I wanted to read them, but I just wasn't ready yet.  My To Be Read pile became a To Be Read shelf and eventually, a To Be Read bookcase. 
 
Towards the end of last year I accidentally joined a huge group of book lovers on Facebook.  I'm not quite sure how it happened so it must have been a slip of my finger and I initially intended to leave it because the books they were sharing didn't seem to be the sort of books I like to read - see how I still considered myself to be a reader, in the present tense, even though I wasn't reading? - but I slowly realised that I enjoyed the fact that I was around people who loved to read.  As well as posting pictures of the books they were reading and giving recommendations, they posted photos of their reading corners, book nooks, libraries and bookcases, their enthusiasm for everything about books made my world seem a better place.  So at the beginning of this year I picked up one of the books my thoughtful sister bought me for Christmas and opened the cover.  I felt ready. 

 
I LOVED this book!  I read it very quickly (for me, I know some people are super speedy readers but I'm not) and only put it down when I had to.  I particularly enjoyed Jessie Burton's descriptive language so here's a sample:
 
"The long windows were ajar, and a breeze made the curtains dance.  The dawn wind had lifted an impressive cloudscape from the mountains beyond Arazuelo, a duck-egg sky striated gold and pink.  The letter still in her hand, Olive tiptoed towards the balcony and saw blank fields spanning towards rugged foothills in the distance, patched with scrub and wild daisies, where kites circled and grasshoppers sawed in the empty melon fields, oxen dragging ploughs across the earth in preparation for later seeding."
 
I can picture that scene in my head so vividly, I can even hear those grasshoppers.  Reading this book switched something on inside me and I knew that I wanted to read again.  I also wanted to make inroads into that TBR bookshelf and start reclaiming space!  So I set myself a gentle target: this year, I intend to read twelve books.  Now, I know that is a small target, only one book each month, but it's a lot more than two books.  As I said, I'm not a fast reader, and when I finish a book I like to think about it and process it for a couple of days before I start the next one.  So, by the end of June I should have read six books.  Gentle reader, I not only met the target...I beat it!  By 30th June I had read these nine books:

 
Nine!  The one with the plain black spine is this -


It's about Dr Thomas Neill Cream, the Lambeth poisoner who may or may not have been Jack the Ripper.  The author spent ten years researching the book and it was the Jack the Ripper Book of the Year in 2016.  (I met the author and promised to mention the book here.)

As you can see, my nine books are an eclectic selection, written between 1817 and 2017, which took me from the Regency English seaside to a dystopian future where books are banned via 1870s Canada, 1880s Burma and London, 1940s Guernsey, 1970s England and the UK and USA in contemporary times.  Please don't ask me to pick a favourite because I can't, I enjoyed every one of them, all for different reasons.  Five of them will be leaving my house and four of them will be staying.  The Teacher has read two of them and one is waiting for The Mathematician on her desk.  We have been talking about books together, and I'm not sure we've ever really done that before.  I feel like a reader again, and I feel that I have reclaimed a part of myself.
 
I'm off now to 1917 Edinburgh.  See you soon.
 
Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


11 comments:

  1. I’m so glad your reading mojo has returned. I’m a reader too, as you say it defines a person. But I go in phases. Sometimes I’ll read three or four books in quick succession and then one will not quite capture my affection and it takes forever. Once started I have to finish a book, sadly :(. I love the escapism a book will give me and like you I yearn for those wonderful sections of prose that can totally lift your spirits. Enjoy your returned reading pleasure. B x

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    1. I have finished every book I have ever started too, although it's rare that I don't enjoy a book. I was horrified when I recently discovered that some people abandon a book if they are not getting on with it - I've obviously led a sheltered life! I didn't think that was allowed! x

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  2. Another reader here. I'm glad you have started to enjoy reading again and are finding joy in being taken to places both known and unknown. I can't bear not having a book to read although now I do use an e-reader as well so I can enlarge the print because of my eyes. I hope you enjoy your visit to Edinburgh in 1917:)

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    1. Enlarging the print is an excellent wheeze, although I don't have an e-reader, and I am aware that I need new reading glasses. Edinburgh is proving to be very good indeed. x

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  3. Brilliant, you can travel the world and not even walk over your doorstep. I read one Cazelet novel from the library but sadly they don't have book two, so I'm keeping an eye open for them in the charity shops. ITV are apparently going to make a series of Sanditon, Andrew Davies has adapted and presumably finished the novel. I know what you mean though, unless a book grabs me from the start, reading has recently taken a back seat. x

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    1. I think that I probably read less once I rediscovered knitting and now that I'm reading again, it's quite horrible having to choose. I had to go and look up the news about Sanditon, thanks for the tip off, and apparently there is talk of nude sunbathing!! I can assure you that Jane Austen did not write about that. Typical Andrew Davies! x

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  4. What a wonderful post! Like you, I was ALWAYS reading books but in the past years, not so much. I love your collection of books. Fahrenheit 451 is a great book! I mostly like to read non fiction but if I read fiction, it has to be very, very good.

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    1. Thanks Kay. I LOVED Fahrenheit 451 and I didn't expect to! I read the first 50 pages on the first evening and then finished the book the following night when it was too hot to sleep. It was so exciting that I couldn't bear to put it down. x

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  5. Like you I have always considered myself a reader but in recent years have slowed down considerably. The pile to read grows each day but I know once the season changes I will be once again an avid reader.

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    1. As I've said to Karen above, I think I probably read less once I rediscovered knitting and now that I'm reading again, I'm knitting less - although I can't bear knitting in this heat anyway - so I'm going to have to work out how to balance the two. x

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