I wrote a few weeks ago about the fact that the house is chock full of books and how I’ve been struggling to get around to actually finding any time to read any of them. Recently, however, I’ve set about trying to redress the balance slightly and over the course of the past few weekends I’ve rediscovered the simple pleasure that can be had from just sitting down and reading a book from start to finish in as little time as possible.
I suspect some of this was due to me rediscovering the local second hand bookshop a few Saturdays ago. Back in the days when I was all alone out here beyond the rim of civilisation and my hermitage was built for one, I used to get terribly lonely and would go for walks into town at the weekend just to have something to do. One of the delights was that very shop, but in recent times, the fact that we’ve been hurtling along the high street on our way to the supermarket or garden centre has meant that we’d kind of lost touch. It wasn’t opening quite as often either as the owner staggered on (I suppose) towards his retirement and his flat in Majorca (or whatever he did) which meant that popping in on those free days just didn’t seem to happen any more. Anyway, a few weekends ago there was some reason or other to pop into town, probably something to do with recycling, and so we went and, because I had a little time to spare, I revisited my old stamping ground and found that it had been sold and was in newer, younger, more eager hands.
For whatever reason, I felt that this new venture needed encouraging and, despite the fact that it now seemed to have online capabilities unheard of in the days of my dismal, lonely Saturday visits, I picked a couple of books from the shelves, paid for them and took them home to add to the various piles of reading matter that I wasn’t getting around to actually reading. The ridiculousness of this situation was not beyond my grasp and I resolved there and then to do something about it and set about one of the piles with a certain amount of gusto.
So anyway, I approached a pile and “The Double Comfort Safari Club” looked a simple enough place to start and was soon consumed over that first weekend. Brevity, wit and comfort all in one slim volume picking up volume eleven of the series of adventures of that Lady Detective Mme Ramotswe in Botswana, a series of books that my other shoe recommended to me and which I’ve come to enjoy despite them not quite falling into the area of being a full-blown, out-and-out thriller.
A more gritty urban thriller was on the list the following weekend as, after taking not a moment’s pause in Tesco, the new Tom Thorne “From the Dead” was added to the basket and devoured almost immediately, coincidentally as the shiny discs of the Sky TV incarnation of the two earliest books landed upon our doormat, which led to a collision of styles and plots in my mind that might take some untangling in years to come, and found David Morrissey creeping into my mental picture of Thorne himself which was rather disturbing as for years he’s been a kind of scruffy Ken Stott for me. I discovered this series of books ten years ago when the first one came out and have read every one but have as yet been unable to persuade the beloved into reading any of them, despite her love of the Deaver and the Patterson novels of similar hue.
Last weekend I decided that the Christmas present pile finally needed looking at because it would be rude not to, and “Stalin Ate My Homework”, Alexei Sayle’s comic memoir of his childhood in Liverpool was the book chosen, which turned out to be, as the blurb had claimed, one of those books where you really felt the need to read out bits of it to whichever long-suffering person happened to be with you as you were reading it. I read his two volumes of short stories a few years ago and it was after attending one of his book signings and shaking the hand of the great man himself (although I would have been terribly afraid of the young version portrayed in the latest book) that the Gina McKee incident occurred. I’m still sure I met her at a party once, but I suspect that it was just that the telly was probably on.
Reading at this pace is, of course, fraught with difficulty and whilst I do enjoy the book at the time, sometimes it fails to sink in. I know for a fact that there are plenty of volumes around me that I absolutely, definitely have certainly read, but if you asked me to tell you the actual plot, or the details of someone’s life, or even the odd historical fact, I might very well struggle to remember any of it. Until, that is, I bow to the inevitable frustrations of wondering and decide to reread it, then it will all come flooding back to me and I’ll remember every subtle nuance and shocking plot twist or tedious factoid as if it was only yesterday. I’m much the same with films nowadays. There are many films that I know I’ve watched which crop up being previewed on the telly and I’ll look at the trailers and wonder to myself if any of it sank in at all, right up until the moment the main villain pops up in his earlier guise as the trusted accomplice or authority figure, and then the whole plot comes rushing back at me from the braincell storage bins at the back of my head and can quite ruin my quiet evening in.
Oh well, I suppose it does mean that I get extra value from my books and films if every single time it’s like coming to them anew. I do wonder of course whether it means that the befuddlement of future old age has already started to befall me, and indeed whether I can even claim to be “well-read” any more. I’ll admit that I’ve read a lot, but as to whether any of it has sunk in and stuck, well that’s a completely different kettle of whelks.
Anyway, what’s next…? Ah, yes… This one looks like it might be good…
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