I'm not going to Colorado this year, but this is about the time I would normally go with my family, and I was thinking how serene being in the mountains and sitting by a river would be about now. I can only inwardly sigh and rely on old memories and then escape back into my books. (And hope next year might include a little away time).
Since books are my 'away' at the moment, I am not thinking of them too much as indulgences or feeling guilty about the number I seem to be switching back and forth from. They are my own little mini celebrations. I have been coming across very dippable books and now my pile includes three. I'd like to think I will read all of them cover and cover and I will certainly try, but they are books I can take my time with. They all contain very short essays or writings or poems that I can easily spend time with each every day or two and make slow but steady progress with.
The first is one that I have written about here as it was a NYRB subscription book last year (that I did not finish reading . . .). I've picked up once again Robert Walser's Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories, which are just as weirdly quirky and charming as I remember them. Walser was a Swiss writer born into a German-speaking family, and the pieces are often very playful while at the same time being tinged by overtones of sadness and melancholy. They span the early part of the twentieth century ending just before WWII, so that must explain a good part of the tone.
The other two books are library discoveries, one being a recommendation I made that they filled. I just picked up Robert Finch's The Outer Beach: A Thousand-Mile-Walk on Cape Cod's Atlantic Shore. I have yet to do more than open the book and take a peek, but I am sure this is right up my alley! The thousand miles he refers to isn't, of course, the length of the beach but an approximation of all the many walks he made over the years. How fortunate to be able to be so close to such an amazing place, and hopefully I will get to experience it in just a little way by reading his essays.
The last book I am not sure how I find, but it must have been during one of my many bookish online wanderings. This is Not a Border: Reportage & Reflection from the Palestine Festival of Literature, edited by Ahdaf Soueif and Omar Robert Hamilton. It looks like another very manageable book of essays by a variety of contemporary authors. The Palestine Festival of Literature was started in 2008 as a way of creating ties between Palestine and the rest of the literary world. The short essays are the writer's experiences taking part in the now tenth decade of the festival. It looks really interesting.
Along with these I have my usual reading to look forward to--I am hoping to finish reading John Wyndham and Flynn Berry, maybe read Eileen Chang's short Lust, Caution and we'll see what other directions my books take me.
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And then there are always a few bookish links that have caught my eye over the course of the week that I will share with you, too.
I am 'happy' to see that someone else owns more books than me and has even less space in which to 'house' them. I am in a decluttering mode, trying to get rid of possessions rather than accumulate more (well, except in the case of books), and a day will come when I sell my house and move into a much smaller space (that requires so much work) but I already fear how I will manage with so many books!
A little news on forthcoming book to big screen movie adaptations. I really do need to read Oscar Wilde. I love the idea of a female lead in the main role . . . And I do have that Donna Tartt book on my reading pile. And yes, I am in line at the library for Ruth Ware's newest thriller.
Yeah, so I didn't get any books to read before the great eclipse, but just in case here are a few for later (and I even have one of them on my reading pile already).
Oh, and a reminder that I need to look for a copy of Antigone, since I want to read Kamila Shamsie's book. (See how my reading pile grows a little each day, and with each new bookish email newsletter that I receive?).
I found this really interesting and would love to visit the houses myself (and then read the books inspired by them), but as my budget won't allow maybe I will just order a copy of the book!
More wishful purposes--I want this book, too. (Because it goes without saying that of course I would rather be reading). And you can never own enough t-shirts (they are like tote bags, right?). This is the one I mostly have my eye on.
Happy weekend (reading) everyone!