"let your boat of life be light, packed with only
what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, someone to love and someone to love you,
enough to eat and enough to wear
and a little more than enough to drink:
for thirst is a dangerous thing"

Friday 23 October 2015

Who reads a book on a Friday night? ME...

A few years ago spending a Friday night at home reading would have made me feel like a total loser. Not anymore.

This picture on Facebook this morning got me thinking and after this evening has matched my thoughts, exactly:-


And, it was quite appropriate because last night I picked up H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald again. I had started reading it a few months ago, but it is a slow read and I lent it to a friend (who was going away and who I knew would enjoy it). She has now returned it and I re-visited it this evening. It is a very different read and a book that you need to savour. Macdonald's writing and sentence structure are beautiful. I love the way she uses commas, and the way she keeps changing the length of her sentences. So clever.

There are many sentences and lines in this book and I am reading it, like I might Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides, slowly and staring at the wall (for a minute). It is my all-time favourite and the one book I have read far more than twice. 

Here, please read this paragraph:-


“Her library would have been valuable to a bibliophile except she treated her books execrably. I would rarely open a volume that she had not desecrated by underlining her favourite sections with a ball-point pen. Once I had told her that I would rather see a museum bombed than a book underlined, but she dismissed my argument as mere sentimentality. She marked her books so that stunning images and ideas would not be lost to her.” 
 
Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

I have never done it, but I am tempted to start underlining some sentences in this book … His coat. An envelope. His watch. His shoes. And when we left, clutching a plastic bag with his belongings….

Oh my word…