Bookish thoughts

I like books. Especially new books. The feel, weight and smell of the things all contribute to the general feeling of desire to own. My favourite shop in the local shopping mall is Waterstones. It's where I'll agree to be met above all other places - albeit there is little choice, it being a shopping mall! My problem comes down to reading the things. I am not a good reader. Sitting down with a good book sounds wonderful. A comfortable chair with an ambient light, whether natural or artificial, and sitting lost in a text appears as a cosy fantasy, but one in which I feel I do not or cannot indulge myself.

"Free therapy"* I heard someone say recently and writing this is a kind of therapy for me. I want to be able to indulge the dream of enjoying a good book. What constitutes a good book is academic and wholly subjective and not my concern. I can find plenty of books. I know what I like to read. I have indeed read many enjoyable and consuming books. More than often, however, I cannot draw myself into the process for any reasonably sustained time. I have plenty of acquaintances, who I can call on as practisers of the art, most of them very close to me, who have no problem in losing themselves in the printed word, but I must find out what blocks me.

"Tell me about your childhood" quotes a line from a Bonzo Dog Band song, so I will. To say books were a rarity in my family is like saying there is bacon in a fridge of a Jewish household. I did have books. Guided by a sense of supporting me in my future education and possibly more by the sweet tongued encyclopedia salesman, my parents bought me large bound set of encyclopedias, well seven plus an index volume, which were my only and earliest memory of books that were specifically mine or antibody's for that matter. What is strange is that these tomes, which contained all the world's knowledge of the world and it place in the universe which the editors deemed necessary for children, were bought for little four year old me.

I could read though. Newspapers and comics were available and I do remember being fascinated by newspaper coverage of events of the world as it was revealed as far back as in 1952. Well, the pictures anyway and in January 1954, I spent many an hour at my grand mothers house poring over two quite enormous books about The Great War which were full of sepia photographs of uniformed men and shattered cities, while my mothered entered hospital to await my brothers birth.

I was fortunate to be the beneficiary at about 4 or 5 years old of two retired spinster ladies who lived near my grandmother's house. They bought me books. Well, they were teachers. The two titles I recall where 'Black Beauty' and 'Treasure Island'. I can remember trying to read both, making some progress and then giving up. Oh, these were the real item though, not the Ladybird abridged versions. Perhaps the books were not considered important or treasured by me, thought to be something to look at but not to be absorbed in.

I can honestly say that by the age of twelve, I had read, cover to cover, just two books. A Secret Seven book and a slim volume called The Shetland Bus. Two books! Plus all the captions to all the photographs in my seven volumes of knowledge.

But it was the text that got in the way. Apart from the captions to the many pictures in the War books and my encyclopedias, the text remained mostly uninterpreted. I only read the rhyming couplets that accompanied each illustration in the Rupert books and left the narrative text for others. (What on earth was it for anyway?). Simple comics were no more than illustrations with speech bubbles. I shuddered when faced with comics like the Hotspur. More text than I could want. And I guess that then is the problem. Textual impatience. I want the text to reveal more quickly, so I find myself reading intently and then skimming and then skipping through texts and emerging after a page or two dissatisfied and uninformed. And then I plough through it again. Or don't.

This is not the case with all the books I have picked up. I have been glued and read tenaciously many a book, both fiction and non fiction, but what causes the distraction and lack of adherence to the text is a factor of the time and place. I have realised that there must be nothing to tempt me away or divert me from the process. I must equate reading as much as a diversionary activity, as I find most other things when I am trying to read.

To be fair, those I know and have known to be the readers that can only be described as avid, seem to consider reading to be an activity against which nothing will act as a diversion. They can neglect, deny, postpone and even cancel many other things in their lives for the sake of the book. I am 100% inclined then other way. There, then, is my problem in a nutshell. And to solve it? I must prioritise and give a better rating to reading then staring out of the window, thinking about nothing in particular, leaving the kitchen untidy longer, watching TV, and attempting a crossword. Oh, and just begin enjoying the book beyond the superficial and acquisitive values that attach to books at the moment. After all, I can appreciate the way words can go together.

I have today bought three new books. A biography of Thomas Cromwell is the weightiest. I could have read fifty pages by now if I hadn't decided to do this. The therapy will begin soon, but I now have my mind on the book and on making the evening meal. Normally, the making of the meal will win, but I am going to read the first chapter and make the meal afterwards.

The therapy is working.

*Free therapy? The reply to this was "I thought it was half past four"