It's become something of a tradition that I start my winter break from work with a visit to my favorite used bookstore (they have a really amazing selection of books--the sort you don't find in chain stores if that gives you an idea), so why should this year be any different? There was a time in my life when I wouldn't consider buying a used book, but now I favor them over new books if I can help it. It's dangerous to stop by there as I inevitably come away with a (usually large) stack of books. I managed to keep things mostly under control . . . are buying five books keeping things under control? I suppose for some of us it is.
I'm just finishing Peter May's (most excellent) The Lewis Man, which is set in the Hebrides. I'm not ready yet to leave that part of the world. Although it's traveling from Scotland to Ireland with Kate Horsley's Confessions of a Pagan Nun, the books both share a rugged, perhaps bleak, view onto the world. Maybe it's the time of year with these short days and darkness, but there's something about that part of the world that is especially appealing to me at the moment. Ursula Le Guin is quoted on the back cover: "As a slant of sunlight illuminates jewels long buried, Kate Horsley's novel brings words to an ancient silence and a living, vivid presence to people who lived in that time of great changes and estrangements we call the Dark Ages." To be more specific the story is told by a sixth-century Irish nun "secretly recording memories of her Pagan youth."
I didn't know anything about Jonathan Raban's Soft City, but it looked most intriguing so I added it to my pile and am now happy I did so. The blurb grabbed me: "Part reportage, part intimate autobiography, this vivid, often funny portrait of metropolitan life has become a classic in the literature of the city." The city in question is London. The book was written in 1974. I can't wait to start reading it.
I'm telling myself now, and I am hoping I really do follow up on it, that I am going to read William Boyd next year. More than just one of his books. Several of his books maybe. One of the books notes that Boyd is a versatile writer and it is true that his books/stories all seem so very different. There was a number of books on the store shelves, but I decided on (to add to my own small collection) The New Confessions and The Destiny of Nathalie X and Other Stories. The first book is a fictionalized autobiography and the latter (as you can tell by the title) a collection of short stories that are "startling, exotic, and deliciously inventive." I'm still trying to decide what to do about my short story reading next year!
And the book on the bottom of the pile is actually one I own in hardcover, A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book. Had to have it. You know how that goes? Bought it with much anticipation and then it has sat waiting for me for ages. I really want to read it (despite knowing it has received very mixed reviews), but I know I don't want to lug around a big hardcover. Now I have a nice, (inexpensive) used copy to lug around.
I said before I wouldn't make a list of 'must reads' for 2014, but now with so many books I know I want to read, dare I make that list? Or by making it do I doom myself to failure? Maybe I will keep a mental list and secretly jot it down in my reading notebook. Then if I don't read a single title from it, no one is any the wiser!
But I am excited about my last pile of books for the year.