shelf space (II)

At the weekend, this happened:

But it's okay.

Because somewhere between the midnight of Saturday night and the lunchtime of Sunday morning, I found the time to do this:

That wall of books is so very nearly mine.

And I forgot just how cleansing it can be; to re-order and move and clean.

So now I sleep facing the window, instead of beside it. And now those little gaps in my shelves--the ones I have almost made purposeful--are a sure, sure reason to buy more books, no?

the arrival

I fully regret putting off my work and not doing it sooner. But I just wanted to pop in and share a book I have been obsessing over for the last couple of weeks.

When I bought it for my course, this semester, I begrudged the money on a book I never thought I'd read again. It simply didn't appeal to me--it didn't excite or enthral or even, really, intrigue me. But my, it is beautiful. It is so incredibly skilful and artistic and emotional. And it will sit on my shelf, as one of my favourite books, for a very, very long time.

Did I mention that it's completely wordless?

Breathtaking. So absolutely breathtaking.

You can see more about it--including lots more of its illustrations!--here. And toward the bottom of the page there is a pretty brilliant and insightful article by its (very genius) author, Shaun Tan.

x

shelf space

I'm running out of shelf space.

This--well, it's a pretty good thing.

It means I'm one--tiny--step closer to this.

A girl can dream, can't she?

I keep planning out my future house in my head (sadly, still such a long, long way off). Most of the rooms revolve around books: where I can display them and ways to create interesting sights for the walls.

Oh. I do love everything about that space. It's casual and lived in. And, I think, it boasts quite a lot of scholarly charm--you know, the way I used to imagine professors' offices to look? I was kind of sad when I discovered that so many of them didn't. That, though, is a different story.

I've created a Pinterest page for such things--one for books, and one for all those other inside spaces. (Ones for lots and lots of other things, too. It's a new, procrastinatory addiction of mine).

I hope you're having a wonderful week.

(The picture credit for the above will be found on that very Pinterest account, by the way. It's a good, good way to cite sources).

brown paper packages tied up with string

I got a pretty special package through the post today*.

It's a book. But before I unravelled that string and peeled off its paper, I didn't quite know what book it was.

You see, for the next eleven months, I'm getting a similar package posted to me on the first of every month. It's all courtesy of a bookshop based in Bath--Mr B's Emporium, should you want to look it up--and, more importantly, Arnold. (He might just be the greatest gift-giver of them all). A bibliotherapist was assigned to me and a secret list compiled and, well--this might just be the geekiest and the most exciting thing.

I am a very lucky girl.

This month's book was The Break, by Pietro Grossi. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes!

*I could not be more excited by--or in love with--that brown paper packaging and the wax seal.

**Oh, and just a little thing I stumbled across earlier. It brought even more of a smile.

that canadian kiss

Somehow, the riots in Canada last week slipped under my radar--I emphasise "somehow" because I pretty much read the news every day (and it's both a good and bad thing, that).

But as I found out about them properly today, I, too, found out about that kiss.

And as I found out about that kiss, I, too, found out about this pseudo book cover.

The truth is, I think I like it more than I like any of the originals!

And whatever the circumstances are surrounding that kiss (and I hope, just hope, it was nothing more than romance), it just might become as famous as this one.

book club

In a couple of weeks time, Kaylia and I will be having a cup of tea and discussing this book. (Go see Kaylia's blog, by the way. She is so very, very lovely).

The only problem is that we live in two, separate continents. (Quite a large problem, really).

So we decided we would set up a little online space--a book club where we could meet and discuss those very same ideas without being in the same room.

The space at the moment is a little haphazard--a lot of design needs so desperately to be teased out. But we will get there--then we will sit back and talk. It would be so very, very lovely to see you there.

i'd like to, please

Hope #17.

Work as a librarian.

Partly because I think I'd fit right in. But mostly because, well, because I think it is one of the greatest institutions we could possibly hope to have.

And maybe the idea of working there, in Trinity College's (Dublin) long room, stretches the dreaming a little bit too far? Never. Absolutely never. Because these dreams don't have to happen---but they are proof, absolute proof, that I will never stop hoping.

(My I'd Like To, Please posts are inspired by Someday Hopes. The picture credit goes to here).

the gathering

"Gatwick airport is not the best place to be gripped by a fear of flying. But it seems that this is what is happening to me now; because you are up so high, in those things, and there is such a long way to fall. Then again, I have been falling for months. I have been falling into my own life, for months. And I am about to hit it now." Anne Enright, The Gathering

the weekend

This weekend was proof that falling in love with your best friend really is the most wonderful thing.

Running through fields, being wrestled to the ground (to evade an imaginary crisis), tickling, sitting in the sun, spying on Nessie, watching kids' films, being silly when we're tired, going out to lunch (when we really can't afford to), trying on hats and taking photographs.

Yes, falling in love with your best friend is a really wonderful thing.

*I also went to the library. It took me a lot of courage (and getting over my pride) to announce to the assistant that I actually might have maybe sort of lost my library card. That's right, the one I have had since I was about six---the one that I was so young to have that my mum, in fact, signed it. But it's okay---because if I do find it, she said I could keep it for sentimentality---and probably posterity. And then she handed me a brand new one---a blue one---and didn't charge. I think she could tell that this was quite a big deal. I take my libraries---and my books, in case you didn't already know, very seriously.

have i told you lately what's been on my shelf?

Last semester, I took a module in Contemporary Writing and it quickly became my favourite class by far. It was nice to read writing that wasn't so heavily scrutinised or led in some way---writing that you didn't read around or know so much about before you delved beneath its cover. And d'you know what? Some of it was really very good.

"The murdered couple, in the weeks ahead, in the newspapers, even at the funeral, would have to shoulder some of the blame themselves. Their bodies were too compliant, unprotesting, over-dramatised. Their deaths---though ugly and gratuitous---seemed even to the policemen gathered in the dunes, partly deserved."

"But surely it is the gist that matters; I am, after all, telling you a history, and in a history, as I expect you---an American---will agree, it is the thrust of one's narrative that counts, not the accuracy of one's details."

"There are so few people given us to love. I want to tell my daughters this, each time you fall in love it is important, even at nineteen. Especially at nineteen. And if you can, at nineteen, count the people you love on one hand, you will not, at forty, have run out of fingers on the other. There are so few people given us to love and they all stick."

"The fantasy never got beyond that---I didn't let it---and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn't sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be."

"The taste of it is always on her fingers, always lurking at the back of her throat. Or maybe the taste of money, or love, is just the same as the taste of catarrh."

And some of them, well, I liked some a lot more than I liked others. The Gathering and Being Dead were written with a sensitivity---a beautiful roll of thoughtful sentences; sound and emotion placed just so---that I couldn't always put my finger on quite how it was done (but it made them my favourites by quite a long way). And The Reluctant Fundamentalist certainly, most certainly, induced a lot of thought.

I just thought it would be fun to give a snippet into my bookshelf, as of late.

What have you been reading? (And if you have, indeed, read any of these---do tell? I am always, always up for literary (and not so) discussion!)

[Just in case the covers aren't clear---which I hope they are!---here's a roundup: Being Dead (Jim Crace), The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Mohsin Hamid), The Gathering (Anne Enright), Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro), Hotel World (Ali Smith)]

inarticulate...

With no university and no day job to attend to, this week has felt a little alienating. I can't lie---for a lot of it, I've enjoyed the freedom: the baking, the sleeping in, the mental rest. But I suppose what I have loved the most is the absolute opposite: the feeling of being at a loose-end; of not quite knowing what to do with myself. Because if nothing directly productive has come from this week, it's been the affirmation that I am doing the right thing---despite me doubting it so often. I haven't opened a book in seven days and I am missing it---missing it isn't even the right word, it's more of a craving, really. Because as much as I don't like the deadlines and the rush and the over-whelming sense of being behind, of only just catching up, I can't live without it. Studying---academic or not---has become a second nature, a reflex, a switched-on mentality.

So tomorrow, tomorrow I will pick up a book and I will get back to studying---even if it's a snatched moment on the train. And next week, next week I will get back to preparing for exams. And after that, after that I will start reading again but---and this is perhaps the greatest revelation of all---it will be for me.

Does that make sense?

new cities

Today Arnold and I went for a child-like stroll through a new city.

And we learned that Ely---apart from it's cathedral, which really is colossal, and architecturally, quite a beauty---doesn't have that much to show for itself.

And maybe I ate a little badly---alright, alright, quite a lot badly---and squinted too much in the sun.

But it was such a wonderful day. It was the company that mattered---and from that, I really felt myself again.

Blue skies all over again, too. I am already falling in love with April.

libraries (why we need them)

I want to share something with you---but, well, it's a little long. But it's also incredibly worth it.

It is written by Zadie Smith and it is about libraries. (And I happen to think it incredibly insightful and smart and honest).

...

"I GREW up in a London council flat decorated with books, almost all of them procured by my mother.

I never stopped to wonder where these books came from, given the tightness of money generally – I just read them.

A decade later we moved to a maisonette where she filled the extra space with more books, arranged in a certain pattern. Second-hand Penguin paperbacks, then the Women’s Press books, then Virago. Then several shelves of Open ­University textbooks on social work, psychotherapy and feminist theory.

Busy with my own studies, and oblivious the way children are, I hadn’t noticed that the three younger Smiths were not the only students in that flat. We were reading because our parents and teachers told us to. My mother was reading for her life.

About two-thirds of those books had a printed stamp on the inside cover, explaining their provenance: ­PROPERTY OF WILLESDEN GREEN LIBRARY. I hope I am not incriminating my family by saying that during the mid-80s it seemed as if the Smiths were trying to covertly move the entire contents of that library into their living room.

It was a happy day when my mother spotted a sign pinned to a tree in the high road: WILLESDEN GREEN LIBRARY, BOOK AMNESTY. The next day we filled two black bin bags with books and returned them.

Just in time: I was about to start my GCSEs. I’ve spent a lot of times in libraries since then, but I remember the spring of 1990 as the most intense study period of my life, probably because it was the first.

To choose to study, with no adult looking over your shoulder and only other students for support – this was a new experience for me.

I think it was a new experience for a lot of the kids in there. Until that now-or-never spring, we had come to the library primarily for the cafe or the cinema, or to meet various love prospects of whom our immigrant parents would not approve, under the cover of that all-purpose, immigrant-parent-silencing sentence: “I’M GOING TO THE LIBRARY.”

When the exams came, we stopped goofing off. There’s no point in goofing off in a library: you are acutely aware that the only person’s time you’re wasting is your own. We sat next to each other at the long tables and used the library computers and did not speak. Now we were reading for our lives. Still it’s important not to overly romanticise these things. Willesden Green Library was not to be confused with the British Library. Sometimes whole shelves of books would be missing, lost, defaced or torn. Sometimes people would come in just to have a conversation while I bit my pens to pieces in frustration.

Later I learnt what a monumental and sacred thing a library can be. I have spent my adult life in the sort of libraries that make Willesden Green’s look very small indeed; to some people, clearly, quite small enough to be rid of without much regret. But I never would have seen a university library if I had not grown up living 100 yards from the library in Willesden Green. Local libraries are gateways – not only to other libraries but to other lives. Of course I can see that if you went to Eton or Harrow – like so many of the present Cabinet – you might not understand the point of such lowly gateways, or be able to conceive why anyone would crawl on their hands and knees for the privilege of entering one.

It has always been, and always will be, very difficult to explain to people with money what it means not to have money. If education matters to you, they ask, and if libraries matter to you, well, why wouldn’t you be willing to pay for them if you value them?

They are the kind of people who believe value can only be measured in money, at the extreme end of which logic lies the idea that people who fail to generate a lot of money for their families cannot possibly value their families as people with money do.

My own family put a very high value on education. Like many people without money, we relied on our public services. Not as a frippery, not as a pointless addition, not as an excuse for personal stagnation, but as a necessary gateway to better ­opportunities. We paid our taxes in the hope that they would be used to establish shared institutions from which all might benefit equally.

We understood very well that there are people who have no need of these services, who make their own private arrangements, in healthcare and education and property and travel and lifestyle, and who have a private library in their own private houses.

Nowadays I also have a private library in my own private house, and a library in the university in which I teach. But once you’ve benefited from the use of shared institutions you know that to abandon them when they are no longer a necessity is like Wile E. Coyote putting a rope bridge between two precipices only to blow it up once he’s reached the other side – so that no one might follow.

Community exists in Britain. It is a partnership between government and the people and it is depressing to hear the language of community – the Big Society – being used to disguise the low motives of one side of that partnership as it attempts to renege on the deal. What could be better than handing people back the power so they might build their own schools, their own libraries? Better to leave people to the onerous tasks of building their lives and paying their taxes. Leave the building of infrastructure to government, and the protection of public services to government, that being government’s mandate, and the only ­justification for its power.

That the grotesque losses of the private sector are to be nationalised, cut from our schools and our libraries, our social services and our health service – in short, from our national heritage – represents a policy so shameful I doubt this Government will ever live it down. Perhaps it’s because they know what the history books will make of them that our politicians are so cavalier with our libraries: from their point of view, the fewer places you can find a history book these days, the better."

(Actual source).

...

What are your thoughts?

on sharing

This week hasn't started in the greatest of ways---just little, unfavoured things that have edged their way into expectations, tainting or dulling their colour. But where there are days remaining, there are chances to recover, to turn bad omens into better things.

This evening I discovered Pinterest---a sort of virtual pinboard. (Although you probably already know; I am always a little late in the discovery of new things). But with that discovery, came this one.

I had never considered doubling a staircase as a bookshelf.

(More pictures of the same thing can be found here).

Don't worry, I will probably blog about a lot of the things I find!

touch of the hand

I can't lie anymore. Sometimes, just sometimes, I judge books by how they feel.

And yet, I like books of all feelings---of all shapes, of all sizes, of all page-consistencies. I couldn't possibly describe how they are supposed to feel, the boxes they must tick before I nestle them beside each-other on a shelf---or better yet, nestle them in the space between my thumbs. Some books, they just feel right. They feel nice to hold---not too big---and nice to thumb through---pages just the right thickness, just the right amount of pulp. It doesn't matter if they are second-hand---sometimes that's better, that smell of old-age wealth and wisdom. It doesn't matter if they are hard-back, either---although they only usually catch my eye if they are adorned, nicely, with a gilt cover.

But Penguin's Popular Classics (in green) are some of my favourites right now. They tick all the boxes---and they fit my student budget (although I probably never properly budget, not when it comes to books).

(Find them at Amazon).

And that last one, The Portrait Of A Lady, is the one I'm reading now.

What are you reading, right now?

alice

I haven't felt very well the last couple of days---my limbs have ached, my throat has constricted and I have had a headache like I have never quite felt before.

Needless to say, I haven't done very much of the reading or the writing I have needed to do.

But I found this Alice-In-Wonderland inspired photograph and it has made me long (more) for long, summer evenings.

(By Andrew and Carissa).

I hope you are having a healthy and happy Monday.

other people's words (again, again)

Whilst trawling the internet today, I came across this quotation---and I knew I wanted to share it. It is long, but it is beautiful.

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes." ~ Rosemary Urquico

(Source: Una Bella Vita, A Beautiful Life).

library envy

This photograph of Nigella Lawson's house-library is outstanding.

...a girl can dream, right?

(Courtesy of The NeoTraditionalist)

heights

"I cannot express it; but surely you and every body have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn into a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath - a source of little visible delight, but necessary. I am Heathcliff - he's always, always in my mind - not as a pleasure any more than I am always a pleasure to myself - but as my own being. So don't talk of our separation again." Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte.

Stumbling across passages like this reminds me why I read at all.

Because it articulates, more eloquently than I ever, ever can, the things I am afraid of---especially those entangled within love.

And is it a little weird that of all the characters I have ever read, I identify most with Cathy, the crazy woman?...

on austen

I am slowly discovering that I am not as much of an Austen fan as I expected---there isn't anything wrong with it at all. I just haven't fallen in love with her, yet, and I am not convinced I will...

But I sure do love this cover of Emma.*

(Image can be found here).

*I have to have it finished by Friday afternoon and I severely, severely underestimated its length. I am such a bad student, sometimes...