Tag: Reading lists

On Reading, Writers Read, Writing Life

Allow: Space and Time

reading and listening to music: the triumphs of being not myself

Susan Sontag, Pilgrimage

It started with my mobile – old, about four, five years old – which had reached its storage limit. And I thought, that’s right. Too much and too many. So instead of adding storage – more, more, more – I started letting go. Removing. Deleting. Images. Files. Applications. Accounts. Email lists. Subscriptions.

I began to hear the space, to feel my thinking, to let things be. I returned to reading for the act in and of itself, without a question in mind, without a purpose or a deadline. A gift of time. Let the body chose the words it needs: what calls? The cover – the title – the cover image – the first line – a page opened at random and a word?

And it continues. The shedding. And in doing so, a containment of sorts. An affirmation. Re-affirmation. Con-firmation. What is it we tell ourselves we need – or can release – with all this virtual and physical stuff? To remind ourselves of who we are? Or to be someone else?

Above, a photograph of books currently in progress or recently read:

  • Mary O’Donoghue The Hour After Happy Hour
  • Johanna Hedva Your Love Is Not Good
  • Amy Key Arrangements In Blue
  • The Paris Review 243
  • Susan Sontag Stories
  • Not pictured but recently read: Helen Blackhurst Swimming on Dry Land and Alison Wells Random Acts Of Optimism.

While I have disconnected myself from Twitter/X, and will, into the future, very occasionally use Instagram and Facebook, you can still connect with me through this blog.

Contemplation, Writers Read, Writing Life

Reading & Staying Put

Image of candle burning and eight books.

  • Magda Szabó The Door
  • Grace Wilentz The Limit of Light
  • Raymond Carter Cathedral
  • Margaret Atwood On Writers and Writing
  • Eva Baltasar Permafrost
  • Deborah Levy The Man Who Saw Everything
  • Edith Eger The Gift
  • the Paris Review Winter 2020 235

And this is my current reading pile, some of which I am reading for the second or third time, others which I have yet to start, and one which I am in gloriously lost inside. By tomorrow this stack of books will have changed again, grown, shrunk, and have been re-considered. Such is the reading life. So deeply connected to that of the writing life.

Wishing all readers, lurkers, viewers, writers and observers safe and happy reading, listening, writing…and being.

On Reading, Writers Read

Writers Read: The Joy of Re-Reading

This is the week when there are so many “best of” lists that it feels like too much  pressure to finish the already large to be read pile before engaging with these lists and adding even more to your to be read pile.

So I have decided to revisit books that have given me joy – without searching out books from my bookshelves but going on memory and finding books within easy reach.

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What books remain with me, years after reading them…..A small pile. A delightful pile. A pile of well-read and well-worn books that await fresh eyes.

And one book, yes, the faded yellow Salinger at the top of the pile, from my teenage years when I wrote my name and followed it with an exclamation mark! And the second from my childhood – Watership Down. Both of these to hand as I have passed them on to my teenagers. The rest are more recent reads, but diverse and wonderful – poetry, non-fiction, short stories and a novel. 

In advance of the 31st December ….  Happy Reading and Happy New Year!

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