What came in……

I love reading letters…. even if they are not mine! :p And it doesn’t hurt that they come in such pretty, handy editions.

I have just finally managed to finished Wolf Hall (after what was probably my third or fourth attempt in the last 6 years). The book is definitely not the one to be blamed for the past failed attempts, it was all my bad for being so easily distracted and lured away by other reads…..

So this time, with the help from the audiobook (and Ben Miles’ excellent performance!), we managed a home run! 🙂

Wolf Hall is certainly worthy of its place on the mantelpiece, that much I can say.

I look forward to reading more of Mantel’s work, and having her Mantel Pieces added to the shelves at this time is just one step in the right direction, I think.

Coming across the Thomas Travisano’s take on Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘life and worlds‘ was an unexpected but very much welcomed discovery. I have always had a fascination with Bishop ever since falling in love with her poem One Art. And from the opening pages I’ve started reading so far, this looks to be really promising.  

Didn’t expect to be buying books again so soon, but these came with very attractive discounts and so there wasn’t any need for much struggle. :p

My Day

There are days we lived as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Li-Young Lee, “From Blossoms”.

Until death, it is all life.

Miguel De Cevantes.

Reading Plans

Current bedside stacks.

This is a time in which very few activities seem right. Mostly I read at this hour, perusing the pile of books that live by my favourite chair, waiting to offer up fragments of learning, rather than inviting cover-to-cover pursuits. I browse a chapter here, a segment there, or hunt through an index for a matter that’s on my mind. I love such loose, exploratory reading. For once, I am not reading to escape; instead, having already made my getaway, I am able to roam through the extra space I’ve found, as restless and impatient as I like, revelling in the play of my own absorption. They say that we should dance like no one is watching. I think that applies to reading, too.

Katherine May, ‘Wintering’.

Hello, fellow readers and friends!

How has the new year taken off for you? Good, I hope.

How is it already mid February and I am only able to write my first post of the year….. guess I must have been wintering abit over here.

I do want to look forward to a good reading year ahead, though, and believe there is much pleasure (& treasure) to be found among my stacks. Some recent re-arrangement activities around my room have helped unearthed some long buried (or rather, not so conveniently accessible) stacks, and I am really enjoying the re-acquaintance with some of them.

I foresee my book buying activities to be significantly cut down this year, as I hope to really concentrate on what I already have on my shelves (& floors).

Speaking of which, here’s a peek at what came in during the past two months….

Mini haul from the year end BBW sales.

Never knew of these lectures but how interesting!

This should be good too, heard many good things about Hazzard.

Love the cover of this edition!

Had my eye on this for some time & was surprised to find it at the sale.

Happy to add this beauty to my Van Gogh collection.

The haul from Better World Books which I thought was lost in transit, but made an unexpected arrival last week.

My reading plans for the year is going to be simple.

Back to basics:

• to read more of the classics & masterpieces (ie: Hardy, Collins, Dickens, Austen, Dostoevsky, Bulgakov)
• returning to first loves (ie: C.S Lewis, Alexander McCall Smith, P.G. Wodehouse, Ali Smith)
• finishing what I’ve once started & have always wanted to return to but never did (ie: Les Miserables, A Tale of Two Cities, Don Quixote)
• getting back to reading letters & diaries (ie: Janet Flanner, E.B. White, Woolf, Rachel Carson, Sylvia Townsend Warner, William Maxwell)
• reading more travel writing for my dose of armchair travelling (H.V. Morton, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Anne Applebaum, Erika Fatland)
• and anything that comes my way at the right time, which brings me joy. 

I may never be able to dance like no one is watching, but I can certainly make a good attempt at that with reading, I think. 

😉

 

Joy to the world….

Joy to the world! the Lord is come;
Let Earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare him room,
And heaven and nature sing, 
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.

Joy to the world! the Saviour reigns;
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
Repeat the sounding joy, 
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found, 
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.

Issac Watts (1719).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

John 1:17 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost – how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.

This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

G. K. Chesterton, ‘The House of Christmas’ (1915).

 

But may all those who seek refuge in You rejoice; may they ever shout for joy, because You defend them; may those who love Your name be joyful in You.

Psalm 5:11 (MEV)

 

Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

John 14:27

 

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

John 16:33

 

I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. 

Romans 15:13

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At such a time as this, where there are seemingly far more reasons for one to mourn and weep rather than to rejoice and be glad; where joy & peace are a real scarcity among so many….. it is my sincere hope & wish that you will each be able to experience a fresh & personal encounter with the source of  it all – Christ, the Son of God.

A very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year to one and all!

God bless 🙂

Small Pleasures

Small pleasures: the first cigarette of the day; a glass of sherry before Sunday lunch; a bar of chocolate parceled out to last a week; a newly published library book, still pristine and untouched by other hands; the first hyacinths of spring; a neatly folded pile of ironing, smelling of summer; the garden under snow; an impulsive purchase of stationery for her drawer — had been encouragement enough.

She wondered how many years—if ever—it would be before the monster of awakened longing was subdued and she could return to placid acceptance of a limited life. The journey into love was so effortless and graceful; the journey out such a long and labored climb.

Clare Chambers, ‘Small Pleasures’.

This was the last book I had just managed to finish about a week ago, and it was quite an unexpected joy – both the book, and the act of actually finishing a book. 

Felt good.

And it feels good to be back here again, after the long absence. 

I’ve missed this space much and yet it was near impossible to muster enough energy and enthusiasm to do anything about it…. until now. 

I still do not have much to say, but thought I’d just share some of the small pleasures that have helped to counter off the small griefs of the past few months. 

 

Small book buying spree.

Am I the only one who is still mourning the loss of Book Depository?? (sniff.. sniff) These were mainly from my final orders with them.

Carving out space for me time.

A little of these, really goes a long way.

Visiting my favourite bookshop (again & again).

And lastly, but probably also the fastest and most effective way to putting a wide smile on my face at any given time…….

Looking at my cats enjoying peaceful slumber.

🙂

The Woman in White.

The story of what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve.

Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper.

The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?

I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.

And these quotes are what I think would best describe Wilkie Collins’ piece of best known work, for me.

A story, well and skillfully told.

A tale of good, ultimately overcoming evil.

A clever battle of wits, driving the plots home.

I especially loved the format of storytelling used here, where we get to hear the story unfolding from different multiple narrators giving their version of the narratives.

I have been a fan of Collins ever since I read No Name, and much as I have enjoyed and appreciated The Woman in White, it is still No Name that I loved.

Any Wilkie Collins fans out here?

New Year, New Books

First arrival of the year, and it’s a true joy to hold and behold!

Happy New Year!

It wasn’t my intention to have missed putting up a Christmas / year end post, and I wished I could have wish you all a happy new year much earlier than this too, but it is what it is…..

The final haul for the previous year, courtesy of the annual year end Big Bad Wolf Books Sale. The offering at the sale this time was rather disappointing, and these were the only handful I managed to glean from it.

Very pleased with this beautiful hardback edition, though.

The whimsical nature of the photo on the cover somehow appealed very much to me this time as opposed to my previous encounters with it…..

Have yet to read any of Berlin’s stories but have been hearing many good things……

Two posthumous collection of Oliver Sacks’ essays, and I’m especially looking forward to his First Loves and Last Tales.

This year, the only clear direction I have with regards to my reading plans is probably to read more from my own stacks, and enjoy the treasures I have already stored up for myself from the many BBW sales of the past. Can’t wait to see what joy awaits me! :p

What about you, dear fellow readers?

How has the year started for you, I wonder?

🙂

Reading in all directions…..

But, from beyond, the North—ice and unbreathed air, lights whose reflections since childhood had brightened and chilled her sky, touching to life at all points a sense of unshared beauty—reclaimed her for its clear solitude.

Elizabeth Bowen, ‘To the North’.

 

The Salinas river was only a part-time river. It was not a fine river at all, but it was the only one we had and so we boasted about it — how dangerous it was in a wet winter and how dry it was in a dry summer. You can boast about anything if it’s all you have.

John Steinbeck, ‘East of Eden’.

Oh, and there’s also this one which I’ve been dipping into lately…..

When we lose certain people, or when we are dispossessed from a place, or a community, we may simply feel that we are undergoing something temporary, that mourning will be over and some restoration of prior order will be achieved. But maybe when we undergo what we do, something about who we are is revealed, something that delineates the ties we have to others, that shows us that these ties constitute what we are, ties or bonds that compose us.

It is not as if an ‘I’ exists independently over here and then simply loses a ‘you’ over there, especially if the attachment to ‘you’ is part of what composes who ‘I’ am. If I lose you, under these conditions, then I not only mourn the loss, but I become inscrutable to myself. Who ‘am’ I, without you? When we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do. On one level, I think I have lost ‘you’ only to discover that ‘I’ have gone missing as well.

excerpt of Judith Butler’s remarks after 9/11, quoted in John Burnside’s ‘The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century’.

At least I’m still reading.

Reality, Reality.

The only book I managed to actually finish reading/ listened to in the past two months.

But the strange thing about life was that you could only live the one of them; you couldn’t live the other one, the one where you went to New York instead of London, and then compare and contrast. You couldn’t compare the life you had with the life you might have had though sometimes Vadnie Marlene Sevlon would have liked to be able to shout Stop and after the requisite minutes Start, and then catch the other life, live it for a bit, and if it was not as agreeable as the one in her imagination, well then she’d be able to return to the old life and appreciate it better by simply shouting Stop and Start again.

Jackie Kay, ‘Reality, Reality’.

Many books have been pulled out from various stacks and shelves and begun, in the last two months or so.

But my interest and concentration in them keeps slipping and waning so much so that it has been near impossible to finish anything I’ve started.

So, this has been a small accomplishment of sorts and hopefully the break that I need for getting out of this seemingly lethargic reading cycle I feel stuck in…..

Anyway, back to Jackie Kay.

Although this collection of stories were nowhere near my love for the collection found in her earlier work,  Wish I was Here, this one had a few that really made their way to my heart as well.

Two, in particular –  the second and the second to last story in the book, which essentially, is one story being told from two POVs.

And the funny thing was I didn’t realize it was so (except that both the stories had stood out for me and were clear favourites), until I had finished the book and was looking for my favourite lines to quote in my Goodreads profile, and then it dawned on me. (Yes, I am slow of heart, or head, or both, I guess) :p

 

In case you were interested….

And here’s one of my absolute favourite lines from the book……

So you think I’m paying you to go strolling around the garden? You must think I was born yesterday. Vadnie stopped to consider this seriously for a moment, the idea that the matron could be born yesterday and then grow in such a short space of time into such a nasty old woman. Not possible! Nastiness needs time to build up.

😀

Checking in….

Current view of my bedside stacks.

Couldn’t just let another month slip by without checking in on this poorly neglected space. Work exhaustion has been mainly what had prevented me from doing so earlier, when I was actually most excited to share about my visit to the latest bookish hangout in town, back in July.

The Tsutaya Bookstore, which has just landed on our shores, is a real treat.

I hadn’t had the same level of pleasure with a bookstore ever since my last visit to Taipei in 2018, which incidentally, was where I first came to know of the bookstore chain.

One of the best feature here is the generous amount of reading space the reader is provided with, and the liberty to enjoy unlimited browsing as if you were in a library.

If money wasn’t an issue, these would have gone home with me.

Spend some much enjoyable time with this stack.

These were the two that came home with me (on two separate visits, though). I love the complimentary black and white bookmarks that came with the purchases. Don’t you?

In terms of reading, I have been dipping into many, but finishing none.

Well, as long as I enjoy what I’m reading, who’s keeping count, right?

🙂