December 2015
A view (45)
8 December 2015, around 16.44.
let no man speak
13 December 2015, around 9.49.
It has been a wretched week. Black cats crossed my path, a man missing a leg turned up on my doorstep claiming to live in my apartment, the car which I have the use of declined to start, and the rain – normally a solace – has almost seemed a blight. For consolation I turned to books and bookstores, going to a bookstore I had never before visited; perhaps that was my error – trying to find comfort in something new. It was one of the those bookshops built out from a house, which are usually personable, if slightly dotty. Here, though, was a dying store – all the scholarly books thirty years out of date, anything truly collectible or even readable long since sold. Each row of shelves was shallow and left the browser at a polished and paneled dead end, from which one backed away, still feeling trapped. It was a cleanly place, like the house museum of some forgotten litterateur, an impression heightened by the vestiges of taste in the remaining books, relicts of a personality no longer able to cherish them. I picked up a copy of G.B. Harrison’s Elizabethan Journal – the only thing remotely interesting – out of something more like politeness than desire and returned to the busy street and the rain.
tautologous
31 December 2015, around 6.34.
At this point it is unlikely I will finish reading any more books this year, so I might as well make a list of the books I most enjoyed reading in 2015:
- Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
- Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man
- Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby
- Anne Garréta, Sphinx
- Mary Lascelles, Jane Austen and Her Art
- Valeria Luiselli, Sidewalks
- J.E. Neale, Queen Elizabeth I: A Biography
As much of 2015 was spent not reading, I thought I might also make a list of the books I regret not having yet finished:
- Winifred Holtby, South Riding
- Edith Sitwell, The Queens and the Hive
- Valeria Luiselli, The Story of My Teeth
- Clarice Lispector, Complete Stories
- Alisa Ganieva, The Mountain and the Wall
Hopefully I will finish reading them soon (especially the ones due back at the library…).