Books etc

I have mostly been reading...

Night Road by Kristin Hannah

This book may not be particularly original or high brow but after finding it in our fiction section at work I decided to pop it ahead of the queue as it was just what I was after. Some gripping escapism. It features some teenagers, twins, love and a tragic accident. I read it in four days. It's books like this that get you back into the habit of reading and I fully intend to tackle something a bit more meaty (Bolano?) next.

I read Night Road in the space of a few days after spending a few months getting to the end of We had it so good by Linda Grant. It isn't that I didn't enjoy this book - because I think I did - it had me questioning life and the universe and the paths our lives may take one day - but I think I found it hard to warm to the characters. An American and an English girl meet at Oxford, marry and have children and grow old. I quite liked the part where their children proclaim that their mother and father must make up the stories of their youth up to entertain them as they couldn't possibly be true. Everybody was young was upon a time. and Everybody still feels young, no matter their age. I can't imagine what I will think when I look back upon my younger years. I can't imagine how I will feel... When I was younger I was obsessed with how books were never an actual representation of time and this used to really bother me. As if all I wanted was a book that took twenty years to read in order to depict twenty years of life. I think I mainly felt jealous about how in a book something boring could be over in a matter of sentences but in real life the same laborious event dragged on for whole hours. I spent most of my youth wanting to be older and I guess I got what I wanted. 

A love of words

I'm quite looking forward to seeing the new film adaptation of On the Road. I also want to see The perks of being a wallflower. I do love a good literary adaptation. I even enjoyed the Hunger Games film!

I know it is such a cliché but when I was about 15 I read On the Road and I loved it. I just remember the paragraph about people who are desirous and burn, burn, burn and the words have burnt themselves into my head. Throughout the last 15 years I have only once come across a person in my life who has reminded me of those words. But I loved that moment of realisation when some words you have read fit a situation. When the world in your head that was created by books crosses paths with the real world!

Speaking about the world in your head that was created by books. I really enjoyed this post by Phil Bradley on how we should brand libraries as a dangerous place.

When I did my library Masters I took the Public Libraries module even though I was fairly certain I would never work in a public library. I took it out of interest and I am glad that I did as I wouldn’t want to be a librarian who didn’t know anything about public libraries.

Sometimes when you spend eight hours a day in a library you forget what you are surrounded by. That inside that library are thousands of books and inside those books are thousands of ideas. Genius ideas, terrible ideas, dangerous ideas. Ideals, emotions, conversations, lies, fabrications and talking animals. All sat there waiting to be picked up and ingested. Ingested and assimilated and experienced. Going to the library could change your life.

But then I think now with the internet people have all that information just one click away and are probably scornful of the above paragraph. And I know that and I have thought about it and it just isn’t the same.

I like the idea of making the library more fashionable and appealing. It is a shame that books are seen as boring but I do think schools today do so much more for reading than they did when I was at school and an English lesson comprised of a mouldy man with his belly hanging out of his shirt and his glasses slipping off his face mumbling through Ted Hughes whilst we sat starting at the clock. I still can’t get along with Ted Hughes. But maybe that’s because I prefer Plath. But then everyone did when we were 16.

I think books are the ultimate escapism. But it’s not about clearing your mind and escaping to a happy place. It’s about escaping from the four walls surrounding you to a different place full of people you have never met saying things you have never heard whilst doing things you will never do. And I think whilst films and music envelope and ensconce you with a myriad of senses; books are just a collection of words. And this simplicity is their beauty. They are the ultimate mono experience!


As I once read in Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert ‘Language is a machine that continually amplifies the emotions’. Apparently I have related to this quote a bit too much. But that’s okay. I don’t mind. I’ll just keep on loving.