I saw this tweet today via my friend Kate and it sums up what I'm trying to arrest by keeping this blog:
Unread books on our bookshelves have a weird power that depends on the assumptions we make about them. In my experience, they can sit there for many years merely expressing that vague aroma of rich potential - which becomes increasingly mixed over time with a keen sense of rebuke for having neglected them. Eventually the shelves speak of little more than shame, as the books sit unindulged and my mind goes on unenlightened by their contents. This is especially true of books by people I know (sorry friends), books that were given earnestly by friends and family, and books on loan to me. Beyond a certain point, neither keeping them a moment longer nor returning them unread seems acceptable, so every borrowed book becomes a little reminder of one's inadequacy.
In a special category of their own are the multiple-times-renewed library books, which fast-track unread shame because I know I'm keeping them from the rest of the community, and because they have an official due date; and which bring them the additional rebuke that I 'ought to know better' since I've worked in public libraries myself for nearly twenty years.
In 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle', there are unreturned library books on the shelves of the eponymous ground house. They stand initially for its inhabitants' few connections with the outside world, and later, for their further isolation.
On its publication in 1962, Time Magazine named it one of the top 10 novels of the year, and it remains one of the public's favourite novels from that year according to GoodReads. My own copy (sketched above) is a 1982 edition brought over from the States by my wife (so it's one of the titles on my list I was carrying less shame around for having left unread until now...) I read it for the waterintobeer book group, and enjoyed the experience of combining book discussion with a glass of beer so much that their reads are definitely going to interrupt my progress through the list.
In the short novel we encounter the mind and world of Mary Katherine Blackwood, 'Merricat' for short, whose obsession with sympathetic magic put me in mind of some of Frank's behaviour in Iain Banks' 1984 novel 'The Wasp Factory'.
I really enjoyed spending time with Merricat, her strange take on the world and her sickly seductive superstitions; as well as being horrified by the cruelty inflicted on her and her devoted sister Constance by the resentful villagers. It's a novel that's disturbing on several levels, not least the sympathy that its central, disturbed character might evoke.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
How to read books:— TechnicallyRon (@TechnicallyRon) January 11, 2020
1. Buy new book
2. Put book on shelf with other books that you don't have time to read because you keep buying books
3. Buy more books
Unread books on our bookshelves have a weird power that depends on the assumptions we make about them. In my experience, they can sit there for many years merely expressing that vague aroma of rich potential - which becomes increasingly mixed over time with a keen sense of rebuke for having neglected them. Eventually the shelves speak of little more than shame, as the books sit unindulged and my mind goes on unenlightened by their contents. This is especially true of books by people I know (sorry friends), books that were given earnestly by friends and family, and books on loan to me. Beyond a certain point, neither keeping them a moment longer nor returning them unread seems acceptable, so every borrowed book becomes a little reminder of one's inadequacy.
In a special category of their own are the multiple-times-renewed library books, which fast-track unread shame because I know I'm keeping them from the rest of the community, and because they have an official due date; and which bring them the additional rebuke that I 'ought to know better' since I've worked in public libraries myself for nearly twenty years.
In 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle', there are unreturned library books on the shelves of the eponymous ground house. They stand initially for its inhabitants' few connections with the outside world, and later, for their further isolation.
On its publication in 1962, Time Magazine named it one of the top 10 novels of the year, and it remains one of the public's favourite novels from that year according to GoodReads. My own copy (sketched above) is a 1982 edition brought over from the States by my wife (so it's one of the titles on my list I was carrying less shame around for having left unread until now...) I read it for the waterintobeer book group, and enjoyed the experience of combining book discussion with a glass of beer so much that their reads are definitely going to interrupt my progress through the list.
In the short novel we encounter the mind and world of Mary Katherine Blackwood, 'Merricat' for short, whose obsession with sympathetic magic put me in mind of some of Frank's behaviour in Iain Banks' 1984 novel 'The Wasp Factory'.
I really enjoyed spending time with Merricat, her strange take on the world and her sickly seductive superstitions; as well as being horrified by the cruelty inflicted on her and her devoted sister Constance by the resentful villagers. It's a novel that's disturbing on several levels, not least the sympathy that its central, disturbed character might evoke.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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