Status Updates From Bookish: How Reading Shapes...

Books bring us joy & comfort all our lives. It's possible the former dominates in childhood (or at least a hapoy childhood) & the latter probably comes into ascendance as adulrhood wears on.

- i felt we were very different as readers, this explains why. She is a comfort reader. She wants books to swaddle her - the sub-title has it backwards: this is a book about how her life shaped her reading

Astrid Lindgren the six Bullerby children, this is the only book originally published in a language other than English that she discusses so far.

I like to read a pure 'ideas' novel now & again or a mood piece. It gives me tge feeling as when I occasionally try to do my son's maths homework, now tgat he is in secondary school. Rusty, underused parts of my brain have to crank up & put themselves into motion & it feels interesting

- she has not named "a pure"ideas' novel" so far in this book. Perhaps like in thus case is theoretical?

And that, of course, is why we buy hundreds more books than we can ever read each year. It's like laying down wine, but it is you who changes and matures until you're ready to consume your stores.

She shelves Stefan Zweig beware of pity
This is the first mention of a book not originally written in English...

And yes, a well meaning friend did tell me I should be looking into the naby's eyes & talking to him while feeding, instead of reading; & yes, it did take me a long time to talk to her again.

Towards the end of 2010 & after some kerfuffle; what with me being so old & not liking sex very much because you can't read through it (footnote: well you can - but God, the fuss when they find out!), i finally got pregnant.

When we got home, a newly married couple, Christopher once again asked the question he had been asking every few years ever since we 1st met. Was I ready to merge our book collections yet? ...'I just don't think we're that close', I said. I agreed to have a baby instead.

We got married. In a cgurch, in London, with a do afterwards. It was a big fuss & I wouldn't do anything like it again...however much of a church weeding you hand off to your mother, sister & husband, it will still make studiply, unexpectedly & unavoidably large inroads into good reading time

An old, well thumbed Puffin edition of Little House on the prairie caught my eye. I had never read it, because along with most of my generation ( in tge UK at least) I larged associated (it) with the television series of the same name. & I did not like the television series... I do remember that the ipening credits alone put me off...far more significantly I hated Michael Landon's hair. Feared it, even.

Second-hand book buyers - they're waiting to see what cones to them...it's about finding new treasures, finding what you don't yet know you lije, what you don't yet know you'll love. The internet has brought us many good things (I'd struggle to name 5 off the top of my head, but I'm sure they exist) but it has ruined the joy of serendipity.

I am struck by how insular this memoir of book love is, it is strikingly like howard's end is on the landing at this point she has so far mentioned zero non-anglophone authors, the authors she does mention are overwhelmingly either British or of the USA, a Canadian is a radical departure. How can someone a year younger than me with an English lit. Drgree have no interest or enjoyment of Globsl English writers?

Forever amber sold 100,000 copies in its 1st week, was banned for pornographic content in 14 US states (70 references to sexual intercourse, 39 illegitimate pregnancies, 10 descriptions of women undressing in front of men, & 49 'miscellaneous objectionable passages' according to the Attorney General of Massachusetts, who can only be commended for the sacrifice he & his red pencil made in order to keep America safe)

I fed the cat & settled down on the sofa with Offred. When the cat had finished eating, he came & joined me. We were bith still there the next morning. With no one to stop me, i read through the night & greeted the new dawn feeling harrowed, exhilarated & altogether as if my mind had been sandblasted

- reading the Handmaid's tale

I also tried exploring love & dating, & towards the end of A levels I did get a boyfriend...when he broke up with me, I was upset, but pleased to have the insight into what all the stories involving any kind of sundered relationship that I'd read up till then had been going on about. However much it hurts, a new kind of pain is always interesting. & once it passes, you have all the time back for reading

The school was amazing. I thought I'd died & gone to Eton. You got a textbook each in every class!

- she goes to school in Bromley rather than in her native Catford. Mostly I think this is a very English english book, but this is even more specific a London joke , maybe even just a south-east london joke

I read in bed of course - which is to say I relocated myself & my book there from the sofa every night without interruption, having long since mastered the art of cleaning my teeth without having to put down my paperback.

To me, as I rested my hip against the table and got stuck in the (secret diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 3/4) read as a horror story.

-she and I both read it at a similar age (circa 13) and were similarly dismayed by it on the first read

When I broke my ankle in 2023, the common assumption amongst my friends & family was that I had tripped over one of the to-be-read piles of books with which my home is liberally strewn...i was actually on my way up the stairs while reading a book & dressed in an off-brand Slanket (my preferred reading attire October-May) and I caught my foot in its hem