Words Words Words
Yet another of the “missing entries.” This one’s from the holiday season that I’m just getting around to posting now…
from December 2005
The whirlwind of the season is receding, and in its wake I’m left surrounded by huge great stacks of wonderfully imaginative books. They seem to have piled up around me in shoals, revealed by an ebbing tide. For days now I’ve curled up on the couch in the morning before the house is awake, and by the lights of the Christmas tree been taken off to India in search of Buddhism, the wilds of the Klondike to run with the wolves, spent a year stargazing in the New England woods, sailed the oceans with Darwin as he formulated his ideas on natural selection, read poetry in Scottish glens…and I’ve barely made a dent.
This season seems designed to overwhelm with sensations. Light sparkles in trees, scents of sweet chocolate and coffee are everywhere. It’s all about sumptuous treats, and the worlds of the words are no different. It’s almost sensory overload. There’s just too many favorite moments.
Lots of these were on my list, and many others weren’t, still others are ones I’ve found in favorite bookstores while shopping for friends and family, or returning things that decidedly weren’t books. So, in the continual conversational answer to, “what are you reading these days?” here’s a bit of look through the accumulated strata of December.
The Stargazer’s Year: a Backyard Astronomer’s Journey Through the Seasons of the Night Sky, by Charles Laird Calia. All the great stories from the birth of civilization parade across the sky every year. They’re waiting, if only we look up.
The Gary Snyder Reader - “The mercy of the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both.”
An End to Suffering, the Buddha in the World, by Pankaj Mishra. Finally a book that takes on Buddhism in the modern world.
The Wilderness World of John Muir one of the original “into the wild” guys.
This I Believe – an A to Z of a Life, by Carlos Fuentes. Another London find while reading the Sunday morning paper at Fait Maison with coffee and croissants.
In the Buddha’s Words, an Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon, by Bhikkhu Bodhi. Yep, it’s meaty, but great stuff.
The Trouble with Poetry, by Billy Collins. With a glint in his eye, Billy takes us on a whirl around his worlds of New England, jazz, memories and surprise encounters.
Magic Seeds, by V S Naipaul. I’ve never read anything by Naipaul, this seems like a good place to start.
Blindness, by Jose Saramago. An out-of-blue gift from Kaye. Don’t know what to expect, but thank you, I look forward to diving in.
The Poems of Norman McCaig A find while in Scotland, real earthy verse a la Seamus Heaney.
From So Simple a Beginning, the Four Great Books of Charles Darwin. thanks Dylan. I’ll have bedside reading with this one till I’m old and gray.
Jim Harrison’s The Beast God Forgot to Invent, opens with, “The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.”
The Collected Stories of Richard Yates This one’s keeping Hemmingway company on the shelf.
I’ll be lucky to get through all these before next season rolls around. Plus, books have a tendency to multiply, and new ones seem to be pouring in weekly. But then, the point of a book isn’t always to turn the last page.
And there’s always the answer to the chaos that is family at this time of the year - the thicker the book, the better the insulation.
Happy reading.
from December 2005
The whirlwind of the season is receding, and in its wake I’m left surrounded by huge great stacks of wonderfully imaginative books. They seem to have piled up around me in shoals, revealed by an ebbing tide. For days now I’ve curled up on the couch in the morning before the house is awake, and by the lights of the Christmas tree been taken off to India in search of Buddhism, the wilds of the Klondike to run with the wolves, spent a year stargazing in the New England woods, sailed the oceans with Darwin as he formulated his ideas on natural selection, read poetry in Scottish glens…and I’ve barely made a dent.This season seems designed to overwhelm with sensations. Light sparkles in trees, scents of sweet chocolate and coffee are everywhere. It’s all about sumptuous treats, and the worlds of the words are no different. It’s almost sensory overload. There’s just too many favorite moments.
Lots of these were on my list, and many others weren’t, still others are ones I’ve found in favorite bookstores while shopping for friends and family, or returning things that decidedly weren’t books. So, in the continual conversational answer to, “what are you reading these days?” here’s a bit of look through the accumulated strata of December.
The Stargazer’s Year: a Backyard Astronomer’s Journey Through the Seasons of the Night Sky, by Charles Laird Calia. All the great stories from the birth of civilization parade across the sky every year. They’re waiting, if only we look up.
The Gary Snyder Reader - “The mercy of the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both.”An End to Suffering, the Buddha in the World, by Pankaj Mishra. Finally a book that takes on Buddhism in the modern world.
The Wilderness World of John Muir one of the original “into the wild” guys.
This I Believe – an A to Z of a Life, by Carlos Fuentes. Another London find while reading the Sunday morning paper at Fait Maison with coffee and croissants.
In the Buddha’s Words, an Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon, by Bhikkhu Bodhi. Yep, it’s meaty, but great stuff.
The Trouble with Poetry, by Billy Collins. With a glint in his eye, Billy takes us on a whirl around his worlds of New England, jazz, memories and surprise encounters.
Magic Seeds, by V S Naipaul. I’ve never read anything by Naipaul, this seems like a good place to start.
Blindness, by Jose Saramago. An out-of-blue gift from Kaye. Don’t know what to expect, but thank you, I look forward to diving in.
The Poems of Norman McCaig A find while in Scotland, real earthy verse a la Seamus Heaney.
From So Simple a Beginning, the Four Great Books of Charles Darwin. thanks Dylan. I’ll have bedside reading with this one till I’m old and gray.Jim Harrison’s The Beast God Forgot to Invent, opens with, “The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.”
The Collected Stories of Richard Yates This one’s keeping Hemmingway company on the shelf.
I’ll be lucky to get through all these before next season rolls around. Plus, books have a tendency to multiply, and new ones seem to be pouring in weekly. But then, the point of a book isn’t always to turn the last page.
And there’s always the answer to the chaos that is family at this time of the year - the thicker the book, the better the insulation.
Happy reading.
posted by alex | 11:58 PM
1 Comments:
Holy moly! Lots o' books! Well, I am sure you will be taking a few of them on your Alaskan adventure. I am trying to read more. I find after sitting in front of a computer all day, reading isn't at the top of my list.
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