Weekend spoils

We nipped up to Northampton, MA for the weekend, where my sister in law lives while she’s completing her residency at a hospital up that way. She’s doing an ICU rotation at the moment, so this was her first two consecutive days off in a while, and the last for about another three weeks. All she has to look forward to in the short term are more 30 hour shifts and long nights on call. About 10 minutes of talking to my s-i-l, can put my own job in very clear perspective: it’s publishing; no one dies. I know nothing about having a bad day or a bad week . I am never, ever going to have to say, as she does, ‘The last two died on me, but I just had to put that behind me and get on with the next.’ And I can’t even begin to comprehend the enormity of doing that day in, day out, when you are physically and mentally exhausted after 30 hours with no sleep, and moreover to continue to work with integrity and empathy, the way I know she does.

I think we are rather lucky that when J has some time off, she chooses to spend it with us.

On this trip we toddled around town. There had been some talk of a hike, but the sleet was blowing sideways at us so wandering from eatery to used record and bookstores seemed a much better option, with a stop for hot chocolate along the way. I scored:

• Death in Vegas – The Contino Sessions
• Badly Drawn Boy – The Hour of the Bewildebeest
• Arctic Monkeys – Favourite Worst Nightmares

and

• Twenty Thousand Streets under the Sky – Patrick Hamilton. Dorothy introduced me to Patrick Hamilton earlier in the year and I’ve been gathering more of his stuff.
• Ka – Roberto Calasso – A complete impulse buy because I so enjoyed The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. This is the same thing but for Indian mythology.
• The Maltese Manuscript – Joanne Dobson – I’ve been looking for something by her based on a recommendation from Hobgoblin.

So now we’re home and I had really good intentions of doing chores. But actually I think I’ll make another cup of tea and settle in with The Maltese Manuscript.

Ms Musings presents: The First Annual Midwinter Book Giveaway

Right. I’m having a crappy week, as things around me go tits up in a variety of ways, to the point where I’m hoping that I am not the common denominator in all these mini-disasters. I need some winter cheering and nothing cheers me up like shopping. But it is not the time of year to be shopping for one’s self, and I do like buying presents and so I welcome you, dear readers, commenters and lurkers, to my First Annual Midwinter Book Giveaway. Could there be anything cheerier than knowing that a free book of your (somewhat restricted but we’ll get to that below) choice is on its way to you, to brighten the long winter evenings?

‘No, there could not!’, you chorus, along with ‘And how do we enter this book giveaway of which you speak?’

Couldn’t be easier, my poppets.

1. Between now and December 20, peruse at your leisure my lists of books read for the last couple of years.
2. Leave  a comment telling me which book you would like from those lists, and why. (There is no format restriction, so if I read it in hardback and it’s still in hardback, that’s what I’ll buy. There is likewise no location restriction. Where you are, your book will go.)
3. On December 21 I will devise some random selection scheme, and select 5 random recipients.
4. I will then notify said recipients via this blog, collect addresses, book shop, and send off lovingly handwrapped books to all five. I make no promises that they will be there by any particular time because how do I know you won’t select some fiendishly out of print title?

That’s it. I feel better now.

A book gratitude meme

From Litlove and also from Charlotte. Since it is Thanksgiving, and also because I spent a week or so feeling fractious and uncomfortable and tense and slightly panicked because I didn’t own what I wanted to read next (Trollope) and of the handful of available books on my TBR shelf, nothing else would suit. On a couple of days I even went out without a book at all and dear gods, what was I thinking? Living in the real world for days at a time is very bad for me. Finally I nipped up to Posman’s one lunchtime, found Can You Forgive Her? and a couple of other titles and immediately felt that nasty lurking sense of wrongness dissipate. So, probably, I’m certifiably nuts, but I have the whole rest of the Palliser series on order now so I don’t care.

What reasons do you have to be grateful for books?

For providing wonder and learning, company and escape. For teaching me that childhood, school, family, work, marriage, love, the world could be other than it seemed to be and so that I could change things if I wanted to. For giving me a vocabulary and a sense of curiosity and letting me travel in time and place. Even for being decorative and giving warmth and comfort to a room.

Is there any author for whose existence you are especially grateful?

There are loads who have been the right discovery at the right time. Donne and Shakespeare and Emily Bronte, to whom I was well introduced at school. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides. David Kynaston and Peter Ackroyd, Georgette Heyer and D.L. Sayers, Anthony Powell, Elizabeth Goudge, David Eddings, Paul Scott, Enid Blyton. They build on each other.

What positive impact does reading have on your day?

It takes me out of my day, mostly. I’ve always had the ability to fall so deeply into a book that I lose awareness of my surroundings and I’m grateful for that. Now I read on the train, and I can forget that I’m standing up for an hour, or if I’m having a bad day at work I can run away and read myself out of it at lunchtime. I’m patient about waiting at doctor’s offices or anywhere else, because it’s not wasted time. When I’m having trouble switching off my thoughts, if I pick up the right book I can turn the whole of my concentration onto a different track. Reading is therapy.

What good things has reading taught you?

That intellectual curiosity is a good thing and that I don’t have to accept what I’m told. Particularly when I’m told by someone in ‘authority’. I hope reading has taught me empathy, given me some self-awareness, and broadened my contexts too, because it’s a way of pre-experiencing situations and seeing how they might be dealt with.

Is there any particular book that’s special to you?

The Latin Dictionary that I carried everywhere with me for three years used to be. I quite missed it when my degree was done. Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto and Glenn David Gould’s Carter Beats the Devil because I read both of them at a point when I was sick of contemporary fiction and had begun to think none of it was any good. I grew up on Enid Blyton, from Tales of the Wishing Chair through The Famous Five to Malory Towers. Wind in the Willows, which I read time and time again until finally I understood it all. Generally, unless I have chosen very poorly, they are each special for the duration of the reading.

What are you most happy to have read recently?

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, because Thomas Cromwell lived on the page.  Little Bee by Chris Cleave, for being emotionally hard hitting and instructive without didacticism. The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway because it was funny and sad and had ninjas and about 1000 ideas per page that each could have sprung off to be a new novel, and it had the most energy of anything I’ve read this year. Austerity Britain by David Kynaston, for being fascinating and letting me see how the country I grew up in developed. Alms for Oblivion, vol 1 by Simon Raven, because Mr W spent time tracking it down for my birthday and as a grubbier and more sordid counterpart to A Dance to the Music of Time.