Mr. Jones and I are slowly reading our way through Bleak House — roughly a chapter a night, though the schedule dropped off in the last few weeks as I recover from a nasty cold. I’m nowhere near the goal of a hundred books this year — it is what it is, though I also think shifting my reading practice to slow it down and savour a book is not a bad thing, either.

As we get closer to the end of the year, I’d have to say that Among the Selkirk Glaciers, a book by William Spotswood Green, has been my favourite. I found a reprinted deluxe edition in Banff, and I read it very slowly, and very deliberately. It was written 1890: the account of travel through the prairies and into the Selkirk mountains seen through the eyes of the author. It is so entirely and perfectly Victorian, and Green is enthusiastic and filled with wonder at what he sees…and quite pragmatic, almost to the point of chagrin, about the mistakes he makes, and the relative discomforts of mountaineering and camping.

But what a view ! worth coming all the way from England to see. In a deep cutting the Bow river wound its way to the mighty Saskatchewan: the great highway of the North West, before the Canadian Pacific Railway revolutionised that region. North, south, and east lay the wide swells of golden-grassed prairie, but to the westward the Rocky Mountains were in sight for nigh a hundred miles. They rose like a great purple rampart, jagged and peaked in outline, above the ocean of grass. Glaciers and snow fields glinted in the sunshine; deep valleys suggested rivers and passes; the distance was too great to make out the details, the sharp outline of the summits melted downwards into blue atmosphere, as the lower portions of the ranges met the golden yellow of the prairie: the contrast was superb.

Later, after coming down from the Lily glacier:

Fortunately before leaving camp in the morning we had put some firewood into the tent; this was now quite dry, though all the rest was dripping; with its aid we quickly got a fire going, and splitting other logs so as to expose the dry inside, we began to steam before a roaring fire. Our shirts dried quickly under this treatment, and as our coats were dry and the rain had ceased, we cooked our bacon in comfort, and fried a scone in the remaining fat in the frying-pan, and after our day of twelve hours’ work felt perfectly ready to turn in by the flickering light of the dying fire. One or two corners of stones in my bed seemed determined to make a lasting impression on me; chipnuncks began their nightly scrambles up and down the outside of the tent; I had some dread that a mosquito or two had eluded our vigilance and got inside our defences of netting; but all these troubles quickly vanished into the blissful atmosphere of dreamland.

It was a lovely book to read; I carried it around with me for months before it was entirely finished. Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth is also going through a slow read. I took it with me to China and read it in airports and during flights (there are a lot of rules about devices on planes, moreso than flying in Canada, and I discovered that taking an ebook was not a good idea). That book isn’t done yet, and Bleak House will take a while, I think, before I’m through.

I have a nice chunk of time off between Christmas and New Year’s, though, and a plan to spend some quality time on the couch with Bleak House propped up on a cushion in my lap.