Category: Books

Ode to an Alphasmart

October 4, 2014

Currently Reading: This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jalloun

(The book mentions this very spot: Jemaa el Fna, in Marrakech)

I’ve been horribly lazy in keeping up with the blog. I was a week in Tangier (my hostel perpetually reeked of hashish, but was right next to the tomb of Ibn Battuta!) and am now in Marrakech for week, where I’ve found a good café to write in, and someone to play chess with.

October 10th

Now in Essaouira for a week. The hostel is criminal. Not because there is no soap in the bathroom (though it is concerning) but because of this.

Using a book as a wedge to keep a bed steady. Bad form.

It’s a bit of a mission in each city—finding a newsagent that has English newspapers, or French newspapers that report international news but I’ve managed so far.

Why bother with newspapers at all in this day and age, when the internet is everywhere?

For the same reason I write this on my Alphasmart.

BECAUSE THE INTERNET IS EVERYWHERE.

And I am weak.

So weak…

If I read news online, then there are links to other things, also interesting and relevant. And those interesting things have links to other things equally interesting, and less relevant, and on and on down the rabbit hole I go till I’m watching videos of baby horses splashing around in paddling pools and I realise I’ve been on the internet for 3 hours and have read only a few worthwhile things (and several lists about signs you are in your 30s.)

I’m so easily distractible, and when I just want to read the news, it’s safer just to read a hypertext-less newspaper, made of actual paper. Just as when I want to get some writing done, I do it on paper or on a internet-less machine.

And for those of you who don’t know what an AlphaSmart is, voila.

So, it’s not curmudgeonly antipathy to technology that keeps me devoted to the old-fashioned, it’s the desire to be at least semi-productive.

Tags AlphaSmart, Le Monde, Morocco, New York Times, newspapers, productivity, writing

Books Travel

Morocco

September 19^th, 2014

It is night. And I am on a train heading north. I cannot see the world outside but I sit with these strangers, my friends, fellow travellers.

“Sit with your friends, don’t go back to sleep.

Don’t sink like a fish to the bottom of the sea.

Surge like an ocean,

Don’t scatter yourself like a storm.

Life’s waters flow from darkness.

Search the darkness, don’t run from it.

Night travellers are full of light,

And you are too; don’t leave this companionship.

Be a wakeful candle in a golden dish,

Don’t slip into the dirk like quicksilver.

The moon appears for night travellers,

Be watchful when the moon is full.”

~Rumi

From a recently purchased Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets.

I never thought I was much of an appreciator of metaphysical poets (apart from Donne), but with Rumi, I was immediately smitten. Granted, he’s not your average metaphysical poet. In fact, he pre-dates all the other ‘traditional’ metaphysical poets by a good 350 years.

But enough of that.

I’ve recovered my Alphasmart, that most wonderous and fruitful of writing tools.

I arrived in Morocco on the 13^th of September.

My luggage did not.

I after a week of nothing, I’d given up any hope of ever getting back my Alphasmart, my leather jacket, my leathermen, my chess set… but they are all returned to me. Calloo Callay!

After spending the better part of an hour on hold today, I finally learnt that my bag had appeared in Rabat, after having a cheeky holiday in Casablanca, I expect. I was just discussing getting it sent to Fes when the phone dropped the call. I decided I didn’t want to bother getting on the phone again to spend ages being tranfered from one place to another until I got back in touch with those I needed, didn’t want to risk another flight to Casablana then to Fes. I knew for certain it was in the capitol. That was enough information for me.

Within the hour I was on a train to Rabat, sharing a compartment with five men, all wearing clashing perfumes.

The women at the airport recognised me

The moment I walked in. “Your bags?” she asked. I replied, yes, finally, my bags where there and we had a mini celebration/ happy reunion.

After reclaiming my things I sat at the Gare de Rabat Ville, writing ecstatically on my Alphasmart and munching a sandwich.

To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t written much of anything but notes since arriving in Morocco. And those wee jots were just interesting bits of information learnt on a walking tour. Quite a rewarding walking tour, because Hakim (BA in English literature and MA in history) near the end of the tour pointed me towards some Moroccon authors to explore. Fantastic. He said we’d pass by a bookshop that would have the titles he recommended (by Fatima Mernissi), and when we arrived the bookstall owner remembered me because naturally, having been in the city for a full 3 days, I’d already been in and bought something. So I made a few more additions to the library. At the time, it was a great consolation for having lost all my posessions. I had, that first day in Fes, bought a replacement chess set (mahogany and lemon wood), then the next day some pyjamas, the day after that, more underwear, socks and more clothes.)

Now my Alphasmart is returned to me (undamaged! Unlike some of the other items in the bag) I feel I can write more. I bought a notebook but as I haven’t had much time to myself, it remains mostly empty. That’s the trouble when travelling with someone, I suppose. My mother, who is with me for the first 12 days of this trip, has far more energy than I do, and a greater zest for going out and doing things. I wouldn’t have done half as much had I been on my own. I certainly would have got more writing and reading done, however. I think I am expected to put everything on hold while travelling, as she is doing. One can read and write later. But travelling is my life, and I cannot put other daily things aside just because I’m in another country. I’d never get anything done.

I continue this on the 21^stin Merzouga, a town on the edge of the Sahara in the middle Atlas Mountains. I am alone now, as I chose to stay behind this morning/afternoon on account of my head injury, which still makes me dizzy. Didn’t feel like a car ride. I banged my head so emphatically last night that tears ran from my eyes as I rolled around, holding my skull. (Tears running from my eyes makes it seem like they are fleeing something, doesn’t it?)

“Kathryn, stop laughing; you’re hysterical!”

I really had been laughing hysterically; I do that when I’m in pain, but I also thought the situation tremendously funny. I had a fever as well, which always makes me a bit loopy, and had taken paracetamol to bring it down. I did my best to obey and be still, but a moment later started laughing again. I tried to explain what was so hilarious, but I couldn’t stop laughing long enough. The only word I could get out (Paracetamol) she didn’t understand, which I also found hilarious.

Eventually, when I had calmed down and the immediate pain had receded, I explained that after the big bang, I had thought to myself how fortuitous it was I had already taken a pain reliever.

“We call it aspirin,” she said.

This afternoon we are to go on a camel ride. (One of those things I’d never do, left to my own devices but she was keen on.) I am deeply sceptical. On the drive here we had to stop for a camel crossing, and one rowdy beast was bucking his way around the front of the car.

I didn’t know that camels could buck. It’s not that I mistrust camels, it’s only that I’ve never ridden one, have no idea how thing think or operate.

(I write this outside, and when flies land on my face I instinctively shake my head to shoo them away. I regret it immediately every time. I feel my brain has come loose and is sloshing around in my skull and is getting sea-sick for it. Poor brain. Concussed twice in half a year. Couldn’t manage any reading last night. I type most of this with my eyes shut, to spare them. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on my spelling.)

I recently finished a book by David Waines called The Odyssey of Ibn Battuta, a medieval Moroccan world traveller, contemporary of Marco Polo, and considered to be the greatest Muslim explorer of the known world.

Waines compares Battuta with the tenth-century geographer, al-Muqaddasi. “[T]he geographer was a a cataloguer of facts while the traveller was a collecter of people.”

A pretty distinction, and food for thought. I wonder what I collect, other than injuries, and where that puts me on the geographer/traveller spectrum. (For it is a spectrum, whatever Waines might think.)

P.S. The muezzin here has a nicer, clearer, more musical flare than any in Fes. There seems to be only one at a time, for I can see two minarets in this town from where I sit on the terrace of the riad. They must take turns. I really should stop now, the wind is blowing and sand is getting in the keyboard.

Books Travel Writing

Writing Spaces – Writing Places… Letter the Sixth

Post author By Kathryn Amonett
Post date August 19, 2014
No Comments on Writing Spaces – Writing Places… Letter the Sixth

August 2nd

Dear Sean,

“In the time when the coffeehouses of Budapest were differentiated not by their price lists, their coffee, and their cold meats, but exclusively by their “literary” tendencies, he too used to sit with his pale face in the baroque gallery of the New York like a faint but ever more brilliant star in the literary firmament.”

It’s a quote from Kornél Esti by Dezsó Kostelyáni. I think I mentioned it in the last letter. It’s what got me excited to go to this writerly place. But of course, it’s not a writerly place anymore.

Kostelyáni’s Budapest is not today’s Budapest, Hemingway’s Paris is not today’s Paris. The literary haunts have vanished. The days of the writers’ places are over, writing places gone.

Or should I say, writer places have gone. Any place is a writing place. Any café, park, bar, tree stump will do, obviously. But places like The New York have lost their literariness. The New York (in the Erzébet Ring Road) used to be a haunt of writers and artists so that not only did it cater specially for the impecunious tastes of its literary clientele, it also provided paper, pens and ink. A “dog’s tongue” (kutantelv) was a piece of paper one could order for a writerly jot.

A special cheap dish of cold meats for writers called The irótál, “writer’s plate,” was a specialty of the New York, an inexpensive plate of cold meats, salami, cheese, etc, served only to writers. The kis-iro-dalmi, “small literary” was a reduced version for the even less well off.

It’s no longer on the menu, and so far I haven’t yet dare try to order it. The place is completely posh now, retaining its fin de siècle grandiosity but using it as an excuse to overcharge its almost exclusively foreign visitors, among whom I must count myself.

Still, I go there often enough, get a seat near as I can to the pianist and eat my expensive but filling bread and goulash. (I don’t eat for the rest of the day, partly because I don’t feel hungry, also because I can’t afford to.)

This is rampaging and misplaced sentimentality, I know. I need to find a new shabby corner of Budapest that will serve me soup for a quarter of the price that won’t charge me three euro just for sitting down, where I can sit and read Hungarian poetry (or write about reading Hungarian poets) and have a more legitimate experience. Fortunately, I seem to run into students of Hungarian literature. My first day back in Budapest I met a guy studying Hungarian literature and philosophy at the University. I didn’t know he was studying it at the time, he was just one of the solicitous citizens, determined to feel sorry for me about the leg, but the following day the truth came out and it will help me with my research… which is less and less to do with my portfolio and more for my personal treasure trove of knowledge.

10,000 words. I shall have to start all over, I think. I tell myself I’ll begin as soon as I’ve got my apartment. We’ll see if that’s so, or if I’ll find a new excuse to put it off.

And turns out, I’m not as depressed as I hoped I’d be here. I’m quite mobile and have been reading about a book a day. My goodness, Embers (the title translated from the Hungarian word for when a candle has burned down to the very bottom) by Maira Sandor is going on the list of Favourite Books of All Time. And I am not even going to bother recommending it to you, or probably to any one. I shall greedily keep it to myself. Also, I don’t feel like it has much universal appeal. Two old men, former best friends, meeting after 41 years of being apart, discussing what happened that last night they saw each other, the day of a hunt. I don’t know, to me it reads like some dark fairy story. It has hints of DuMaurier, in that much of the book is visiting the past.

August 11,

Many many days since I’ve written, not just to you, but anything. For a while I as simply absorbed in the reading of Hungarian classics (by the way, I’ve bought 15 new volumes, one is such an enormous hardback anthology of modern poetry I’ll have to buy a new case just to transport it and the rest), then after that I spent many days stuck to my computer, absorbed in the news and growing more and more despondent. I spoke to mother about how useless I am, that, had I stuck with my earlier 2009 plan of studying migration and refugee studies of Africa and the Middle East, I might very well be doing something useful by now. But I’m not. I’m vagabonding around Eastern Europe, being completely self-indulgent. It’s a blow to hear that a former home is being marched on. Of course, it’s nothing to what those living there are going through, but I feel so helpless and useless.

About a week I did nothing but read, begging pardon for the unfair adjective, trashy novels about Napoleonic dragons and fantasy queens and girl assassins and watch the latest batman trilogy all in one go.

Pulled myself slowly out of it. Today I’m back to Hungarian classics, and even, wonder of wonders miracle of miracles, I even started (started) my portfolio which is due in exactly a month from today.

In a little red moleskin (I’ve had to buy more since coming here) I’ve pencilled in questions to put to our mother when I see her next. One of them is, will you tell me, when the time comes, what it’s like to see your own child go grey? I am sitting on the upper floor of a café just off Andrassy street. It’s summer and (as heat rises) no one else is up here but me. Down below at one of the tables outside though is a pair drinking espresso. A man and a woman. The woman is older, her hair gone white and she’s balding at the top (something I feel a bit bad about because I probably would never have noticed such a rude thing were it not for my particular vantage). The man’s hair is a pretty steel grey on top of a darker black. He still has some rosiness to his cheeks, a healthy tan to his skin which doesn’t at all sag from his face or arms. My imagination has no trouble picturing what an adorable little boy he must have been once. Mid forties now, I’m guessing, but I’ve always been rotten at determining people’s ages, so that says nothing.

(I snapped a candid photo, but felt guilty at the thought of sharing it, or even having these strangers on my camera and computer, so I deleted it.)

Have you any grey hairs? I’ve never noticed or looked. Does our sister? One’s never likely to notice, she keeps her hair covered most of the time. I think my hair would look rather nice with silver in. Silver and gold.

But what is it like, to watch your own child go grey, I wonder. I never asked Grandmamma, but perhaps she and mother talked about it. I hope so.

They are still out there, the pair of greys. I have no way of knowing if it is mother and son, but the sight of them did make me wonder.

Kellan was in my dream last night. An SUV had pulled up and I knew that I had to get in, that I had to leave and likely not come back, but I stayed outside, making the SUV wait, which it did. I didn’t even know what I was waiting for, but when my nephew came toddling up (his mother was not in sight, just the boy) I knelt in the grass and gave him a big hug, then went off to whatever duty that suburban represented.

I don’t hold much stock in the interpretation and analysis of dreams (as a few nights before I dreamt of duelling in shark tank), but I thought it was rather fine of me, to wait to say a final goodbye to Kellan first.

ARGH! No more letter writing! I need to work on the dissertation, because I’m actually starting to worry. I give myself 2 weeks to get a rough. A few days after that for editing, before I send it to my tutrix, see what she thinks.

Over and out.

P.S. The view from my room

Tags age, ageing, Budapest, deadline, Dezsó Kostelyáni, Hungarian literature, Kornél Esti, writing, writing places

Books Travel

Letter the Fifth

You didn’t reply to my last letter, but I’m writing again anyway.

July 13^thish,

Dear Sean,

Luke, fresh face English boy who will be very handsome when he gets older, both charms and infuriates me. I say he’s a boy but he’s 20. He has travelled more than most his age and speaks Arabic and Russian but he’s still a boy. He has such tidy thoughts about things. Such well articulated, precise thoughts on complex issues that I’ve seen in many of my classmates at Cardiff.

I think my opinions, whatever they might have been at 20, were orderly and articulate, too. Now I can barely manage to comprehend most issues in the world, let alone present them, along with an opinion of them, in a neatly wrapped package. I tend to garble on about one thing only to contradict it the next moment. Ah well. He’s gone now, and I’m the only native English speaker again, so I’m good company in struggling to express myself.

I look forward to going to Morocco after I turn in my dissertation. Of course, first I must actually write the thing.

I’m renting a flat in Budapest for the month of August, where I intend to work on it four hours before noon every morning. That ought to do it. Then I can spend my afternoons and evenings in bookshops and museums and the opera. I didn’t get to go last time, now I can attend as often as I like. I have bought a good cane, stylish and feminine (in my opinion.) I will say this for crutches, though, my triceps have never been this defined, no matter how many hours I spent in the gym. Sadly, or perhaps thankfully, I doubt they will be as nice when I’m home in October, for I will not have had need for them.

Oh, I spend the start of September (and the very last weekend in August) in Germany with Stephy (the Austrian, not the German whom you met in Cologne six years ago.) After a weekend in Oldenburg we will be tourists on the northern islands for a time. Should be nice and relaxing. I might be ale to fly from Budapest to Bremen, but there is also a cheap bus from Prague. While it is a bus (ick) it’s an excuse to visit the Czech Republic. If I have time, of course. I’ve forbidden myself from leaving Budapest until the dissertation is complete. (Though I’m still in Ukraine as I write this.)

Currently reading:

Steppenwolf. I would say it’s one of those books that change my life, but it hasn’t. It has exposed it. Thing is, I didn’t especially like the book, but I related to it… sort of hated it for that. Hesse says that self-hate is a sort of egoism, and I suppose he’s right. I’ve always been a vile egotist.

In any case, I think many who read Steppenwolf must see themselves in it, else it wouldn’t enjoy the success it has.

I’m officially recommending it to you. I think, in a different way, you are Steppenwolf, too. You’ll understand the weariness.

I’ve finished it now. Still recommending it. I maintain that it’s not exactly pleasurable, but there is something edifying in it. It’s like taking medicine, and the more I think about it, it seems to me to be the spirit in which Herman Hesse wrote it… for himself.

He wanted to cure himself.

I also think I read it at either exactly the right time, when I was at my gloomiest and grumpiest with my age and infirmity, or if I shouldn’t have read it when I was feeling so sympathetic with the gouty Harry Haller.

The last two books I have read, Journey by Moonlight and Steppenwolf both had much to do about suicide. The next book I read, I’m determined will be more light-hearted. Not sure which yet.

There’s a thunderstorm now, bringing the welcome cool and proper rain smell with it. There was a thunderstorm a few days ago, L and M were camping in the mountains 4 days ride from here, and in the night the horses panicked and ran nearly all the way home. They have returned and leave tomorrow. They will leave the horses here and take a bus to Romania where they will search for an extremely endangered species of cattle that only live high in the mountains where no cars reach.

July 21^st,

I have decided on a book now. Archer’s Goon, by my adored Diana Wynne Jones. Not sure why I didn’t read something of hers the moment I got my cast, but it is just what I need. It’s not a reread either, but one I’ve been saving for a special occasion, for when I would need it. I’m running out of ones I haven’t read yet. I despair when I read the last one and have nothing left.

This will be horribly depressing thing to write about, and you’ve probably heard this rant before, but I can’t be the only one who gets torn up when an author dies. DWJ died over 2 years ago now and I am still crushed to think I’ll never get to read anything new from her. What about Robert Jordan, who died writing his penultimate book? And I know more than a few of us are concerned about George R. R. Martin and his Song of Ice and Fire.

What happens when writers die? To us heartless readers, for whom the writer is simply the machine producing the product we want, we mope at the loss of the writing (not the writer). Those of us desperate for more story will resort to fanfiction. Bad idea if you are reading, and a waste of time if you’re writing.

What else are you supposed to do when one of your characters suffers a cruel and untimely death? (Cough, Game of Thrones, Cough)

It’s one thing for an author to already be dead when you discover them (Oscar Wilde, Vladimir Nabokov, J. R.R. Tolkien, Ireve Nemirovsky, Jane Austen to name a few personal favourites). You know from the start how many books you’ve got to read. It’s okay to be disappointed that Wilde only wrote one book (and I am disappointed, but his plays are still my love and joy) but at least it’s not a shock. It’s quite another thing to be stalking your favourite author on their website, twitter, facebook, what have you, and know they’re working on a new novel and you are waiting impatiently and then,… nothing.

I mean, what are you supposed to do? Reread everything they ever wrote so that the pain is that much more acute?

I was doing an interview with writer (and head of London City University’s Creative Writing MA) Jonathon Myerson and I posed him that question, rhetorically, but he answered it anyway.

“Find someone else.”

And really, that’s the simplest and best advice. It’s the only thing one can do, as a matter of fact. I’ve found many new authors worth following, of course. Is it the same? No, of course not. Nor should it be.

People I’ve started following in the last two years:

Tracy Chevallier

George R. R. Martin

Glen Duncan
Jasper Fforde

Jonathon Howard (for whom I have you to thank. Did you the coughsignedcopyofcough his latest book I gave you?)

There are numerous others, but those are the principle ones I can think of for now.

I mean, you won’t even start a series of books unless it’s already finished, and I can understand the sentiment, though am too greedy myself to wait.

But all the same, to writers, I feel that if you’ve got cancer, WRITE THE HELL OUT OF YOUR LAST BOOK! Seriously, finish it.

I think it was Asimov who, when asked what he would do if he only had a year to live, answered, “Write faster.”

I’ll admit it, I get emotionally invested in characters, (and perforce, to the authors that write them.) Everybody does. We do this because we are book people.

Imagine the horror, if you will…

We were all devastated when Sirius Black died in the fifth Harry Potter book, but imagine how cataclysmic it would have been if Rowling had died instead? I shudder to think about the fallout (all the fantastic work with the charities the former billionaire alone would be a tragic loss, let alone leaving the series unfinished.)

I’m just saying, that authors shouldn’t die. Unless they are done.

Authors I give permission to die:

Harper Lee

She did it. She’s done. Well done.

Phillip Roth

Completed solid life work. Well done.

Toni Morrison

I feel she has written more than enough to be proud of, and she’s not writing a series. I salute her.

Next after this I know which book I will read, one I’ve just bought (even though I’ve plenty unread titles on my Kindle. Kornel Esti, a Hungarian writer’s thought experiment, meant to be tremendously clever. He gives his id a character and then collaborates with that character to write a book. Granted, I suppose that is in part what writer’s do anyway, but he is admitting that he’s doing it.) I look forward to it.

I will end this letter here, to make up for the excessively long last one.

I remain your (less grumpy, still hobbled and held housefast, but now mostly placid) sister,

P.S. Emily had puppies. I finished Kornel Esti (clever, but for the writing, not the conceit of the book, which was disappointing but still worth reading.) Now reading Chess Story by Zweig. Halfway through and like it immensely so far.

P.P.S.

July 30^th, finished Zweig, Bronte’s The Professor and silly sailing fencing story called Steel and am currently reading Tibor Dery’s Niki: The Story of a Dog and Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot.

Arrived in Budapest yesterday. It seems to disconcert people to see a young woman walking with a cane. They all too solicitously stand aside, or carefully look away, or race ahead to hold doors open for me.

I also spent about 10,000 forints (about $40) on books my first day here. So, falling back immediately into my old vices.

Books Travel Writing

Letter the Fourth

July 2, 2014

Dear Sean,

P. S. (PreScript) I stumbled across one of those websites that have an arrangement of odd or obsolete words. I’ve scattered a few throughout this letter, but only when they are truly apt. You’ll doubt know them when you see them.)

Here begins the letter proper.

If there’s one thing being montivagant is good for (I almost want to say montivagrant) it’s that it provides ample time for introspection. Depending on the person, I’m not sure this is such a good thing. I daydream too much, I think, when my mind isn’t given a task to mull and ponder, I come up with the most ridiculous scenarios in my head that can entertain me for hours. I’m sure shepherds are either the most philosophical of people, or they are the most fanciful.

It’s a good thing I want to make my living in fiction, otherwise all this imagining would be a waste of time. It probably still is, but at least I can put it down as practicing or preparing stories.

My self-reflective moments are probably of even less use than my fantasizing. In books, people are characterized by certain traits. I suppose that’s why they call them characters. And while I was wandering with the herd I wondered how I would categorize myself. What is a primary characteristic of mine?

Perhaps I’m the wrong person to judge, or perhaps I’m the only person to judge. Do correct me, if you think I’m wrong, or if you perceive me differently, but I feel like I’m categorized by impermanence.

To me, this is not at all a bad thing.

Yes, in the grand scheme of things we are all impermanent, but in my life, and my presence in the lives of others, I think of myself as being transitory. A series of stopgaps. I take comfort in this, though from what I’ve read, many people fear it (or at least many writers describe people so). From famous Achilles (from the Illiad, not the Odyssey) to Keats, who famously put on his tombstone a regretful (and consequently, entirely incorrect) epitaph: “here lies the one whose name was writ on water” people have wanted to make their mark, to last, to endure, to make a lasting impression or despair ever doing so. They wanted permanence, they wanted a name that would last.

Whereas a significant percentage of my life has been that of xenization. Living as a stranger in a place makes it easier to leave. I don’t mind being forgotten. I hate reading that people miss me, when I have no intention of returning. It’s a sort of rule, never to go back.

(My desire to write is not borne of a desire to extend my life, and I take comfort in noms de plume.)

I am comforted that my presence is only temporary. That I’m not a landmark but a waypoint, itinerant. Always yonderly.

When I do get my yacht someday, I think I might call it Yonderly.

But stepping away from the abstract… these last few days I’ve taken on the job of swine herd. Naturally, I still have to care for the horses morning and evening, but in the ripest hours of the afternoon, it is my responsibility to pasture magaliza pigs: 5 adults each upwards of 200 kilos, and uncountable babies. (Actually, one can count them, I’ve just never managed. They are far more charming than their parents, and much easier to lose track of.)

I’ve come to the conclusion that swine are like people, just completely devoid of vanity.

Pigs are intelligent; an implied threat is just as effective as a hitting them, moreso, in that the great beasts remain calm instead of squealing and running off. Ah well. M says this new girl could be a good herd, and I’m not clamoring to take her place. I like them, but they are too clever to deal with, and something about them makes me uncomfortable. It’s not like they need or want privacy but seeing them go about their business seems intrusive in a way that watching other animals doesn’t seem to be. Maybe it’s because other animals have grace and beauty, and even though I know they are not, it seems like when they move they are putting on a performance. Pigs just carry on in such an unashamed way that makes you (meaning me) almost embarrassed for them. I think comes from my comparing them with people, which I don’t do with other animals, apart from perhaps dogs, whom we speak to and let live with us in our homes as one of the family, who embarrass us when they lick their private parts or flatulate in from of company.

I fear what people might be like without their vanity. I could make it more noble and say pride, but I really do mean vanity. Would we bathe? Would we keep our houses clean? If we didn’t care what others thought of us, what would we give up?

This little mental exercise would no doubt reveal some obvious benefits if we lacked vanity (no one would suffer from self-esteem issues) and we might lose our desire to obtain things that show off our status, capitalism would tumble and businesses wouldn’t rule the world, but on interpersonal levels, how would we treat others if we didn’t care how others would judge our behavior? No doubt some of us would be the same as we always are, but others of us might act as a pig. They are not, in their hearts, generous beasts. I’ve never seen a pig, when presented with food, graciously let other pigs have a share. They want all of it for themselves, if they can manage it.

What would happen if people exchanged vanity for gluttony?

All the expressions about pigs: greedy as a pig, eating like a pig, selfish pig, you swine… I never gave them much thought before but after spending so many hours with them, I have given them new consideration.

Thing is, I’m sure that other animals are just as selfish about their food, or careless about their hygiene, but they don’t get the reputation pigs did because we aren‘t holding them by our standards. So it seems I can’t be the only one who personifies them, who sees them as people.

Try as I might, I honestly can’t recall a single mention of this in Animal Farm, but I know Orwell must have made some sort of observation or comparison. Perhaps I need to reread it, knowing pigs (and history) as I do now.

In any case, the pigs unsettle me in a way. While their motives are always plain, one can never really know what they might do. Herding buffalo and horses is relaxing. Herding swine keeps me vigilant. It’s fascinating, but not how I want to spend the rest of my days.

If herding horses or buffalos (or sheep or goats, I suppose) make one thoughtful and introspective, herding pigs concentrates ones thoughts, almost darkens them. Or at least, it does for me. Perhaps it’s because they still smell like the slaughter house. Up till recently, they were cannibalistic fed on the castoffs of the butchers’ and the abattoirs’ and their sty is still littered with bones, teeth and bits of bone that they didn’t eat (or perhaps they did and that’s how they came out again.)

No more about swine.

July 4^th

Currently I’m in Kolmir. It’s a small city for a conference that I’m not attending. L is, though, and she booked accommodation that has two beds, so she invited me along as a treat. 6 hours away by bus and I’m still in the same region but the journey was worth it just for 3 days of running water: hot showers and flushing toilets. She knew I wanted to get work done and said this was an opportunity to write without the distraction of the ranch, but I’m afraid my first 6 hours to myself was spent in sleeping for an additional 2 hours in the morning, then watching the BBC adaptation of Death Comes to Pemberly (one of the few examples of the film version being better than the book.) It’s 5pm now and I sit down to write but do this instead. Oh well. At least it’s something.

Let me tell you about my ride the other day, and I know what you might be thinking (perhaps you are not, no doubt our mother would be though): riding with a fractured foot?

Short answer, yes. I keep them wrapped and I’ve got the trick of walking on it in a way that doesn’t sting so badly. Besides, spending the whole day in the saddle is better than a day walking, and I was only thrown once this time.

I was on Zitra, a lovely mare with the sweetest filly of the whole herd. She’d never been ridden before and didn’t understand the commands, but after 10 hours of riding she had learned. We rode through many neighbouring villages, making a tour of the old wooden churches of the area.

The most exhilarating part of the trip was when everyone (L, Ivan and Angelika) had got down from their mounts to take a break. I stayed on because jumping down hurt the foot, so I did it as little as possible. Grovny, L’s horse, just decided to run away, when usually she’s the most obedient and has been ridden the most. L ran after her and the others fought to control their own mounts.

I was still atop Zitra and when L didn’t come back soon, I went after them. If L couldn’t catch up to Grovny by running, surely I could catch up at a gallop.

And gallop we did. Zitra may have many faults as a riding horse, but she is fast.

Grovny had disappeared into the Oak Forest. I’m not being dramatic or sentimental, that’s its name, and Sean, it is beautiful. The oaks stand far enough apart that grass can grow on the forest floor, and apart from some poised blue flowers that I could’t name even if I’d had time to look closely, the entire floor was covered with green grass so heave and tall that it flopped over in all directions, like waves. I wish I could have taken a photo, but I know it wouldn’t have done the place justice, but you would have really liked this place.

It was obviously a wild place, but there as something elegant about the waves of grass, and how artistically the light filtered through the oak leaves to highlight the green floor in patches, truly like a little green sea.

Anyway, I’d never tried to gallop with Zitra but she did famously. It was probably the most exhilarating thing I’ve experienced, racing through that forest alone on Zitra, an untrained horse, but she was made to run and I, at that moment, felt made to ride her.

I stopped to listen and call for L, but I heard no response. When Zitra realized her baby hadn’t (couldn’t possibly have) followed, she was upset. Back from where we’d come in the far distance I could barely hear a young whinny, and Zitra whinnied back.

The second gallop wasn’t exactly my idea, though I had considered returning to the others to wait for L, but Zitra made the final decision and she raced us back.

This time, even faster.

Now I’ve been thrown before by mothers frantic to get back to their babies (my being just an unnecessary burden), and this is what I dreaded when she took off, and the trees whizzed by so close I could have reached out and slapped them (or they could slap me, rather) as we passed.

I remember thinking “If she throws me off at this speed, that’s the end.”

And I was okay with that. Yes, one the one hand, I was certainly aware and unhappy about the possibility, but on the other hand, I was urging her to go even faster. Part of me had to know, needed to push as far as we could go. There was something romantically fatalistic about it. (I’m sure I could make some parallel to Icarus, but I shan’t. He didn’t expect his fate, and mine didn’t materialize.)

In short, I felt like I was actually breathing.

But she kept me the whole time, maybe she forgot I was even there, I felt so light. Or perhaps she had accepted me as a part of her. In any case, we exited the Oak Forest as one, a whole and healthy organism, and met her baby again.

We eventually got back together with L, and after that, going home, we tried galloping a few more times, but it was never as nice as those first two time. I was still aware of the saddle and stirrups, it wasn’t as fast, her gait as graceful. It would be a pity if I never got to experience that level of perfect galloping again, but I’m very glad I was able to experience it in the first place.

The only regrets I have of that day is that you could not see the forest (and getting thrown earlier in the day, but I landed on my side and not on my foot, and no (more) broken bones, so I can’t even say I regret it all that much.)

And now, a little rant about useless persons.

Tanya, is a bicyclist, part of a touring group, but she and a 17 year old boy didn’t want to go through the mountains and asked f they could stay at the ranch for a few days. Strange, it seems longer than that, but you know what they say about fish and unwanted guests. I’m only glad that she’s gone and that I have this lovely mini-vacation to restore me. I will give but a few examples of how she bothered me. That’s the worst part, is that I know that I could be the bigger person and just let it go, and the fact that I’m annoyed is mostly my fault, but this knowledge did nothing to change the fact that I felt this way, and giving vent to my frustrations will relieve me, I hope.

First day it was just bossiness in the kitchen. Fair enough, I’m not hugely attached to the way I boil rice and if she has a better way, that’s okay with me. The next morning however, she strolls in at 830 for a late breakfast (we all breakfasted late) and afterward, when I’d just sat down with my book and tea, she says that perhaps I should take her to the shops in the village, to show her around, because it’s not good for me to sit around all day, indicating my book, cup and air of imminent relaxation.

I wanted to rant at her that I’d been up since six am, capturing a strange and panicking mare, getting that mare back to her own farm, capturing Igor’s bull, getting the bull into a truck (think Hatari) and of course, taken Leyla out and applied her medicine. (Think giving medicine to a reluctant child is difficult, try applying medicine to a reluctant horse.)

Oh, I ought to mention that abattoirs here, even though the owners are very rich, have not invested in humane technology for killing beasts. They still go for the ‘guy with a hammer’ practice. The bull did not go down quickly. Poor Igor. That bull could have grown 200 more kilos, but he was so afraid of the villagers’ hatred that he had him slaughtered early. (This is actually the same bull that came after me that one day, when Sikan saved me.)

Igor gave use some of the meat.

Oh, and I’d also fed the rabbits and seen to Ina and her baby (who were sold a few days ago, alas. She’s to be some poor cart horse, when she is clearly meant to be ridden.)

In any case, I’d already broken a sweat twice in the hours she’d still been asleep and then she all but accuses me of laziness for wanting to enjoy a chapter of my book and a cup of tea.

Grr!

July 11, 2014

So, it’s been quite a while since the last entry to this letter. Holiday ended and we returned to the ranch. We’ve had several new workers come, Ina and her baby have been sold, Leyla was taken away, so I felt like most of my duties have vanished, which isn’t such a bad thing given my current condition. Day before yesterday it was raining, and we’d let the pigs into the buffalo paddock, as they needed to be watered. But the shepherd brought the buffalo back 3 hours early (probably because he wanted out of the rain) and, as the vulgar phrase goes, all hell broke loose.

I’m not sure if you were aware, but water buffalo and giant pigs seem to be mortal enemies. The buffaloes hate the pigs, and any time the two species meet, there tends to be a bit of a premature slaughter. While the pigs are 200 kilos, the buffaloes can still send them flying, rip them open with their horns. The pigs, while they have wicked sharp teeth, don’t seem to be much of a match for them. They are still remarkably stubborn and don’t know when to fight and when to flee. In any case, the shepherd put the buffalo in with the pigs. (I originally wrote fubbalo, there, rather than just correct it and move on I leave this parenthetical note about it, and challenge you to imagine what a fubbalo might be.)

It was all hands on deck. We, meaning Elisa (Ukrainian), Julian (German), Luke (English), L and I, all ran to the paddock to try to get the buffaloes away from the pigs, and chase the swine out of the paddock.

(Sidenote: I’ve renamed Elvis, the large male. He’s now Wurstie, little sausage. And speaking of names, the rabbits Somerset and Maughn remain, and the three babies are Willow, Clover, and Thyme. Their mother is Beatrix. Charmain is the largest and most consistently frightened rabbit, and Eglantine, the large rabbit that has savaged 3 people now, has been renamed Cottage Pie. The others laugh at my naming of all the animals, as they are going to be eaten, but I won’t be here when that time comes. So they get names.

Anyway, back on topic, as I was chasing pigs, I slipped in the muck (I like to tell myself it was mud, but I hold no real illusions as to what it actually was) and my ankle exploded. At least, that’s how it felt. I think it was more of a mutiny. I shouldn’t have been running anyway, with the stress fractures in that foot, but desperate times…

After spending ages hobbling on a stick the quarter mile to the house, I spent the rest of the day with my foot up. Didn’t sleep because it stabbed and throbbed all night. About four in the morning I tried to go to the outhouse, failed astonishingly. As I sat in the rain on an old stump, I admitted that I might need a doctor. When the rest of the house awoke, I asked M if this were possible. He said sure, take Elisa to the clinic in the village. I pointed out that I couldn’t even make it to the toilet, how was I supposed to get to the village.

Enter Igor. Wondeful, lovely, Igor.

He drove me to the city, Khust, called the doctor ahead of time, helped me hop right in, saw to it that I was seen immediately. (Igor is well connected in the region.)

He really made the whole thing smooth and metaphorically painless.

I haven’t paid anything. Igor took care of it, though I doubted he paid much either, as the doctors are personal friends of his (and get free cheese and milk from the farm.)

My first cast. No one has signed it.

M has drawn a buffalo on it, though, which is nice.

The doctor who made the cast was actually the kindest of all the ones I visited. (The radiologist was the cruelest. She knew she was x-raying for a broken ankle but didn’t appear to be conscious that slamming around and twisting said ankle might be painful for the patient.)

And I actually cried. Not vocally, but while the doctor was trying to get my foot into position (stubborn thing didn’t want to) tears were rolling down my face. To my enormous embarrassment, the doctor saw and said, “I know I’m hurting you, but there has to be pain before it gets better.”

I knew that, obviously, but it didn’t stop the stupid tears.

Still, he was the nicest and gentlest doctor I’ve ever had, and told him so.

When they’d asked if I wanted something for the pain I said yes, more readily than I ever have in my life. I’ve always felt that pain serves a purpose, keeps you from doing things your body shouldn’t do. But this time I agreed (the cast would prevent me from doing things I shouldn’t just as effectively as pain, I reasoned). When they brought out a needle and the nurse slapped my behind, gesturing that I should roll over, I declined and apologized. I’d take the pain after all.

Later in the afternoon Igor came to the house again, this time with crutches for me. They are old, but fine. They creak but work just as any other pair. The only real difference is that instead of the foamy padding that tucks under the arm is instead just the wood covered in sheepskin. I feel bad though, because apparently Julian had spent the afternoon making a pair for me. (He’s been wood carving since he was a boy.)

Anyway, no more running after horses or pigs or buffalo or anything remotely fun.

I spent the entire next boiling summer day in front of the wood-burning stove in the kitchen boiling plums for jam, removing pits from the melted plums, and stirring for hours and hours, adding sugar. Next day was much the same. Eventually, the process was finished and we filled dozens of jars with plum jam. I sweated more inside stirring than I did running after animals.

In these last few days, I’ve had plum jam at every meal, even as a syrup on ice cream.

In any case, it’s now time to write letters and hopefully my portfolio too. (I received an email yesterday from my tutor, filling me with guilt.)

The cast helps enormously. I’ve got medicine to take at breakfast and supper and even though I know it’s a bother to be casted up and crutched, it’s such an improvement from before that I can’t help be grateful. Also, my x-ray (which they developed in a traditional darkroom, kind of neat, though the hospital itself was a gloomily soviet building) makes for a nice wall decoration for the kitchen/sitting room. Though I hope it doesn’t disturb future workers.

Thing is, with me unable to do any hard work, I feel useless. I had intended to stay until August but I might just go back to Budapest and be an invalid. I had hoped to go to Georgia and Armenia (after Kiev and Odessa) but I don’t want to be hobbling through the Caucuses. Hobbled. That is the world. I’ve been hobbled. Montivagant no longer…

July 14^th, 2014

I have finished only 4 books in the last month, and that includes A Slight Trick of the Mind, that I read yesterday and today. Pitiful. Pitiful.

I think it would be foolish to attempt going to Georgia and Armenia when I can’t confidently get around. Last night I retired early and spent a few hours thinking about what would do. I’ll go back to Budapest as soon as I can hobble. (I’d go sooner only I feel I have to give the crutches back to Igor.) I’ll find a good stick and work my way to Budapest, where I will concentrate on my Portfolio (it gets a capital, owing to it’s importance in my life). Because who knows, maybe I would be too distracted in Georgia as well and/or start something new. While it is a bummer, I know that going back to Budapest is a wise, if ultimately duller option. Still, finishing dissertation stuff is priority.

I no longer feel grateful. With a broken foot, it’s a struggle just to make tea or go wash my hands, I feel rather stuck, which is probably the most depressing situation I could find myself. I had planned to be here through August, and now that I can’t leave, the desire-need is overwhelming. It’s only cast and crutches but out here in the middle of nowhere, it might as well be a ball and chain.

Powerless in the face of this driving compulsion (that I’ve been a slave to all my adult life) I grow despondent, and morose, and all the more tired by pretending to the rest of the house that I’m not despondent and morose. I’d like to seclude myself in a hostel or hotel someplace where I can be true to myself and just grump.

I do my best writing when I’m down, maybe this will be the making of my final portfolio, if I could only get out of here. I have no doubt that my inability to maneuver will continue to sufficiently taint my mood in Budapest and that my mood, combined with the location, will leave me scripturient.

Your limpier, grumpier sister.

P. S.

Apologies for the long delay between letters. I suppose it’s due partially to laziness and partly to distraction. I’ll write again if/once I’ve relocated.

Tags buffalo, farm, horseback riding, injury, jam, pigs, reading, swineherd, Ukraine, writing

Books Travel Writing

A Letter to My Brother

Because I’m a better correspondent than blogger… this post is an email I’ve recently sent my brother, which sums things up.

Dear Sean,

I write this letter, as I may. It’s been a while since we’ve spoken, and since having one of our Skype chats would be inconvenient in a hostel, I’m writing you a letter. Insomnia is made much more unpleasant when you are forced to spend the late and early hours in a hostel surrounded by young people snoring drunkenly, (and so unappreciative of their ability to sleep). I plugged myself into an audiobook the entire night through. Bad idea, as it happens, because now it’s properly day out, and there’s 5 hours left of the book and I don’t want do anything other than finish it. This certainly means a wasted day in Budapest. It was already noon by the time I actually got out of my bed, and that only because I was hungry.

Even then I continued to listen to it while I ate my instant noodles. I made tea too, but somehow it seemed less acceptable to just sit there drinking tea for another several hours whilst plugged into my iPod. Most people would think I’m unsociable. Which is probably true but they wouldn’t know that I’m unsociable because I’m thoroughly wrapped up in a novel. A novel that I hadn’t even intended to get to until I was well shot of my final portfolio. Too bad. So, I took my tea and my typing machine to the patio table outside the hostel and told myself I WOULD write. But the thing is, I was so stuck in the English countryside (the novel is I Capture the Castle by Jodie Smith, such a silly thing that I didn’t think I’d like, the description isn’t that impressive but the reviews are fantastic. I was hooked almost at once. The narrator is so… readable. It has that appeal to young white girls, I suppose, that Jane Austen does, but set in the 1930s. And no, I don’t really recommend you read it unless you really want to, though if you did I think you could appreciate it on an aesthetic level.) In any case, I felt it was a bit hopeless to try to get back to writing Budapest (even though that IS where I am) so to get myself going, I thought I’d better write to you, even though my blog is in desperate need of updating. Much has happened but I just haven’t got the knack of what to say in a post. It comes out all wrong. I really am the worst blogger, in content and timing.

ToDoist isn’t helping me, I’m afraid. It’s not that I need reminding to do things, I just need to want to do them. (Was I always such a lazy child? I rather think I was.) Which brings me to Uncle Berlin’s manuscript. Well, if I can waste a day not doing any work at all, and reading things that cannot even by the loosest construction be considered research, I suppose I can spend a few hours every evening editing.

I’ve finished my tea, but not this letter. I will make more.

Back now. So glad this hostel has free tea, and a kitchen that doesn’t close. Real tea leaves too, not Lipton tea bags. Black from Turkey, mint from Morocco, Hibiscus from Egypt, and green from Sri Lanka. Well, and camomile tea bags. Or at least, it smells like camomile, I can’t tell just by looking at the label. (Hungarian really is quite unlike any other language I’ve come across. Delightful and intensely frustrating at the same time, especially since I won’t be around long enough to learn it.)

I haven’t much money, so tea fills my stomach in between meals of sachets of tomato soup, ramen noodles, and the cucumber and cream cheese bagels from the bookshop here that I like. The place is horribly dusty, frightfully unorganised, plays just the sort of music that I like (from Satie to Billie Holliday) and has a secret garden out the back. It would be quite perfect, only I feel that are simply not enough books.

But then again, I suppose that’s my complaint about everything, so that says nothing. I’ve come across many bookshops that I love, but I’ve never found the perfect bookshop. I suppose I’m saving that for the one I’ll one day open myself in Morocco.

I bought two anthologies of Hungarian poetry yesterday; bilingual editions with the original Hungarian, and the English versions on the opposite page. They haven’t been just translated, but reversed by famous English and American poets, to keep the same feel of he poem more or less in tact. (Or so I am led to believe, as I cannot actually read Hungarian, though the bookshop employee was very obliging in translating a few words for me when I asked him.) They were rather expensive, and I will have to throw away more clothes to make room for them in my pack, but they were necessary. You can’t walk more than a block or two without crossing a street named for some poet. I’m convinced Hungarian poets have gone shockingly unappreciated. But then again, that’s the same for most poets, I suppose. Most artists, too. Nothing really romantic about being an unappreciated starving writer abroad, though I suppose that’s exactly what I’m doing. Not doing me any harm, as I gained a lot of weight in the UK, and can afford to be a bit hungry. It’s a wonder all academics aren’t jigglier people, or perhaps they are and cleverly hide it with waistcoats, jumpers, and tweedy jackets (with optional elbow patches).

I haven’t got my mark back for my final essay. It would serve me right if they failed me. I was horribly offensive. When will I ever learn? I should have stuck to my boring idea, I had plenty of material and it wouldn’t have involved stepping on anyone’s toes. As it is, I think I must have offended nearly the entire staff, at least a bit. Ugh, I get squirmy just thinking about it. It is the sort of thing I would have felt far more comfortable saying to their faces; turning it in as an essay makes it seem like an official declaration of disapproval. My classmates, on the other hand, encouraged the essay, and discouraged direct confrontation. I suppose they don’t have much faith in my tact.

I took a walking tour about the history of communism in Hungary. I really got on with the tour guide, she’s a writer too, and offered to help me with anything I’d like to know about Budapest. Unfortunately, all that this has resulted in her pointing out everything that is wrong with my premise. I am now convinced I’ll never know the culture well enough to set a story here. Actually, I feel that about every setting I use, even the American ones. Perhaps especially the American ones. I think I am cursed to write stories about people in places they don’t really fit in and don’t truly understand but I’ll never be able to outdo Camus, so what’s the point? Don’t answer that, I know the point.

Besides, the agent wants a magical story set in Budapest, so that’s what I shall write. Being mercenary makes me actually feel better about it, but there is that sense of humiliation in picturing a Hungarian reading it and being disgusted by all its faults. The agent might not notice, but my brain would cringe at all the inaccuracies (both real ones and the those I imagine are lurking throughout the story, hiding from me behind the ignorant facades of buildings that I’ve erected for the setting.)

I suppose I’ve worked my way back to Budapest now, and should have a go at writing it. I think I’ll go back to my bookshop to do it, though. The patio is nice (though it’s not really a patio, I’ll attach photos) but I’m bothering people, I think. I’ve been here too long.

There’s seems to be no good place to play my harmonica.

Your sister,

~Kathryn

P.S. I think my favourite thing about Budapest is the sheer number of flower stalls they have on the streets. I don’t know why this should please me, I always sneeze when I go by, and I couldn’t identify more than a handful of them – and even then it’s as simple as, sunflower, lily, rose, daisy, petunia. I might also recognise a tulip. (Those were the ones that grew around the tree in the front yard of our old house, yes?) But I do like the names of flowers, even if I don’t know what they look like, especially the important sounding ones. Perhaps what enchants me is just the necessity to have them on every street corner, to cater to the people’s need of readily available fresh flowers, bouquets at a time. I always imagined flowers as a luxury, a decadent item. But in a city were the average monthly salary is less than 500 euros, people can hardly be expected to waste money on pretty trifles. I can only conclude (using my own inane logic) that in Budapest, flowers are not luxuries, but necessities. And isn’t that nice, somehow?

Rhododendrons and chrysanthemums,

Tags Budapest, correspondence, letters, travel, writing

Books Travel

Book-shopping in Budapest

Post author By Kathryn Amonett
Post date June 3, 2014
No Comments on Book-shopping in Budapest

It is a singular sort of torture (as a linguist and a book-luster) to surround yourself with books that you can’t read.

I have wanted to read Philip Roth’s Everyman for some time, but I know that it would be pointless to get this copy (though some imp of the perverse still urges me to get it).

So why do I do this to myself? Because where else am I supposed to go? In the company of books, I’m always at home.

That having been said, I’ve compiled a list of bookshops that sell foreign language books; I intend to visit as many as I can whilst I’m here. I’m looking especially for translations of Hungarian literature.

So begins my quest.

Tags Bookshops, bookstores, Budapest, Hungarian literature, Hungary, International, Translation

Books

Sections in the Bookstore

I spend what may seen like an inordinate amount of time in bookshops. I am, even as I type this, sitting in Waterstones, stewing over a novel by Italo Calvino. I’m a bit pressed for time so this won’t be a full review. Instead, I’ll post the practically perfectest quote I’ve ever come across.

“Sections in the bookstore

– Books You Haven’t Read

– Books You Needn’t Read

– Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading

– Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written

– Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered

– Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First

– Books Too Expensive Now and You’ll Wait ‘Til They’re Remaindered

– Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback

– Books You Can Borrow from Somebody

– Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too

– Books You’ve Been Planning to Read for Ages

– Books You’ve Been Hunting for Years Without Success

– Books Dealing with Something You’re Working on at the Moment

– Books You Want to Own So They’ll Be Handy Just in Case

– Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer

– Books You Need to Go with Other Books on Your Shelves

– Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified

– Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time to Re-read

– Books You’ve Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It’s Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them”

~Italo Calvino, If On a Winter’s Night A Traveler (A Book That Filled me with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified, but Upon Reading, is Now Entirely Justified..)

Tags books, bookstores, Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler, reading