Summer reading and reflections on blog-keeping

Regular readers will notice that there has once again been a period of silence from me on this blog, for which I can only apologise.  I've been busy with other things, most notably preparing for and then taking my yoga assessment - which I passed.  So now there's no excuse not to get round to all the things which I put off in the run-up to the exam. 

I've been enjoying writing this blog and feeling very grateful that people actually appear to read it, but at the same time I've found keeping it up a bit difficult.  I thought I would take a pause from book reviews and share some of why that is with you.  As someone who has worked mainly in self-driven ways for the last several years - doing a PhD, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship, mixed in with training as a yoga teacher - I'm very familiar with the peaks and troughs in my own self-discipline.  Inevitably, this blog has sometimes felt like yet another thing I need to get round to, and yet another source of self-reproach.  But what I've found hardest about it - which many of you may find entirely unsurprising - is sticking to the perameters which I set for it in the beginning.  You may recall that I started this blog in February this year in a fit of enthusiasm for reading the books I already owned, or rather those of them which had travelled from Edinburgh to Manchester in the eponymous wine boxes.  And some of them I have indeed read, and been very glad that I have - the satisfaction of discovering what lies between the covers of a book that's been sitting on the shelf for years is a very true and pure one, combining pleasure with virtue, and for how much of what we do in life can we claim that distinction?  The discipline of then writing a short piece about each book has also been welcome; I've enjoyed the process of crafting sentences which encapsulate something of the essence of the book and give a sense of my response to it, as well as something of the background that may have conditioned that response.  It's reminded me that I do actually enjoy writing, something that doing a PhD has a tendency to call into question.

But - and it's a big but, as it's turned out - the blog has also reaffirmed some of what reading means to me, and not all of it is compatible with the discipline I set for myself.  For me, as I'm sure for many of us, reading is one of the ways in which I think.  I seek out books which I hope will help me reflect on whatever is currently preoccupying me: the things that interest me, the decisions I have to make, the skills I want to acquire or refine.  I suppose this is the result of having been brought up as a reader, and having therefore unconsciously absorbed the notion that books and life are inseparable. 

At the same time there is an aspect of my reading life that is close to my desire to see new films as they come out at the cinema: keeping up with the new and emergent.  Here having a writer for a husband and living in a city which seems to put on a literary event every other night do not help.  The "one-in-one-out" book purchasing policy which pertained in Edinburgh has been abandoned in Manchester, due to Gregory's tardis-like office, apparently ever capable of accommodating more books.  We go to a lot of readings, and when we like what we hear we often buy the book.  Well, you've got to support new authors, haven't you?  And there's the thrill of discovery - the new voice that's not quite like any other you've heard before, but may be hearing a lot more of.

All of which adds up to saying that confining myself to reading the books I already owned when I moved to Manchester has proved beyond me.  So in the future I propose the following: I will alternate my posts, one on a long-owned book and the next on something else.  Sometimes one has to be flexible to be sustainable, no?        

In this new spirit of diversity I'll tell you a little about what I read over the summer and since.  The big read was David Mitchell's second novel Number 9 Dream, the only one of his five novels which I hadn't read and which I pounced on in the Chorlton Oxfam bookshop.  There's something satisfying in having read everything by a particular author, and there aren't many that fall into that category for me.  Anything by Mitchell is well worth reading - he's entertaining, intelligent and constantly surprising.  Number 9 Dream is set in contemporary Tokyo and centres on nineteen-year-old Eiji Mijake and his search for the father he has never known.  From murderous bowling alleys to pizza delivery outlets, it's a rollercoaster of a quest story, leaving me wondering more than once what had really happened and what was, as the cliche goes, all just a dream.  Perhaps this doesn't really matter so much, but those of us who had it drilled into us at primary school that getting oneself out of a narrative cul-de-sac by suddenly announcing that the main character woke up and found that it had all been a dream is not acceptable literary technique may find more to quibble with.  Number 9 Dream is also a novel to be read quickly, as I realised only once I had picked it up and put it down several times, the summer months not giving much opportunity for sustained reading.  Nonetheless I recommend it, whether as an introduction to the wonderful David Mitchell or to fill in a gap in your reading of him.

Other reads were much shorter and fell into the category of things that happened to cross my path.  Browsing in the Buddhist Centre in the Northern Quarter I came across a small book by a Buddhist woman on community living; since Gregory and I had spent much of the late spring and summer considering whether we ourselves should go and live in an intentional community, I found it a helpful read.  I also read a short and very incisive book by a Quaker of our acquaintance, David Blamires, entitled Pushing at the Frontiers of Change: A Memoir of Quaker Involvement with Homosexuality.  This was a fascinating account of how Quakers came to be in the fore-front of sexual equality - something that I as a younger-generation Quaker have felt very proud of, without having any real understanding of how it came about and how uneven the road towards it was.  David starts with the 1960s and the landmark publication of a text which came to the very forward-thinking conclusion that it was the quality of the relationship between two people which mattered, not their sexuality or marital status.  This was the work of a small group of Quakers, however, and stirred up much controversy.  It was probably the last time that Quakers made national news until the recent decision in 2010 to celebrate same-sex marriage and to campaign for a change in the law.

Reading books by people I know is another feature of my reading life, and the next post will return to the original purpose of this blog with a review of The Claude Glass by Tom Bullough, hopefully before too much time has elapsed.  After that, Penelope Lively.