The Joys of Reading

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a decisive sort of person. Especially if I’m not given options. Give me a finite number of options, and I can choose. There are limits to the decision, which is half the battle.

But ask me to, for example, name my favourite book, and I will dither.

Because it’s a bit like being asked how long a piece of string is. There are just so many contenders. I’ve been reading an awfully long time, and I grew up without a TV, so there was just so much time to fill. My mother is still, kindly (though increasingly grudgingly), giving house-room to some of my childhood library and university books. One day I shall reunite them with the library I am building elsewhere.

I can’t remember not reading, or not having my own library card. We were signed up early, and the town-library was our normal meeting-place for shopping trips. Or the local Ottakar’s, as it then was. And now I have a collection of library-cards, and almost all the ones I need for a map of the South-West of England. Just missing Cornwall.

Reading took me to new and wonderful places, to worlds I reimagined in my games, and gave me friends other than my siblings. Yup, imaginary playmates all round. Some stories and characters taught me new skills - I spent quite some time honing my observational skills after discovering Sherlock Holmes - and others taught me valuable life-lessons. Primarily to be wary of the overly-smooth. They’re probably too good to be true. This was reinforced by the horrible Rob storyline in The Archers a few years back. Too charming for words, apparently, and poor silly Helen got sucked in.

Of late, I have reread more than I have read, and I have, as most bibliophiles do, a whole stack of To Be Reads, some of which have been waiting patiently for some years now. My Kindle’s TBR list is also growing. Life seems to have slowed my reading down. Or my collecting has sped up. One or the other, perhaps both. I am, though, generally more content to wait for books to turn up in charity shops these days.

I read all sorts, though. Fantasy, romance, the disparagingly-named chick-lit, historical, murder. Fiction, non-fiction, biography and autobiography. I have a collection of Beowulfs and Volsunga Sagas, Nancy Drew and Poirot. Singles and series.

More than anything, I read to be entertained, to feel the whole gamut of human emotions (because books and their characters are frequently more real than Real Life), and to experience things I wouldn't otherwise experience. Like magic. Or places I may never visit. Like the Shire.

Actually, that’s not true. The South-West is very Shire-like, and some of us are short enough to be Hobbit-height.

Usually, my answer to the favourite book question is a duology: Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. I’m less keen on the third of narrator Fanny’s tales, Don’t Tell Alfred, largely because favourite characters don’t feature so much in it.

Let the Adventure Begin!

 Today is the first day of the MA. The start of my Library Quest.

I’m a couple of books ahead of the reading, of the core texts that is, though reading comments on the Forum makes me feel woefully behind already. I’ve only recently decided on the History and Context specialism for the rest of my set-texts.

I’m rereading the first core text, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I read it initially in snatches in the early hours of the morning, so I don’t really remember all that much about it. And on my Kindle, which is rarely conducive to remembering, I find. But I have the print edition now, the Norton Critical with all the essays at the end, and I’m reading with a pen in hand for the thoughts which strike me as I float on the Thames listening to Marlow. I’ve become a scribbler-in-books sort of person. It’s very cathartic to give vent to thoughts in such a manner.

I find it a curious sort of narrative form, to have a first-person narrator narrate someone else’s first-person tale, especially verbatim like this. Or perhaps it’s a change in fashions, with modern first-person stories being more concerned with the narrator’s story and inner voice, the narrator’s reflections on what’s happening. And using present tense.

But even then, the few first-persons I’ve read tend to have at least some focus on the original narrator, even if s/he isn’t the “main” character of the story. The only other such story I can think of which largely ignores the original narrator in this manner is Nevile Shute’s Pied Piper, but the second person’s story isn’t reported verbatim by the original narrator. He summarises and retells, with the occasional interpolation from the “present” – the story’s being told during an air-raid.

But I will admit to putting books down again pretty quickly if I see them written in first-person. Especially if I see they’re the inner monologue variety, recording every last thought and feeling. Or talking about Inner Goddesses. So tedious. Mind you, Heart of Darkness is largely the spoken monologue of Marlow, and that isn’t much better.

It is, though, interesting, in reading the context of Heart of Darkness, to read of Conrad’s experience in the Congo, and the Congo’s experience of Belgian colonial power. Since I seem to be heading down the History and Context route for the rest of my studies, it seems only fair to start here.

Not for the faint-hearted.

I’m more aware of ghastliness of British colonialism – the British Empire covered a quarter of the globe at one point and spent several centuries establishing itself, so there’s lots of time and room for atrocities. Belgium, and specifically King Leopold II, seems to have more than made up for the relative smallness of the Belgian colonies. And for having only really started in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

And now I’ve found a few other memoirs of adventures in Africa from European explorers or missionaries from the same period to read, although a bit earlier than when Conrad was in the Congo. As well as Miss Tully’s Letters from Tripoli, from the late eighteenth century.