Monday 23 February 2009

BY THE BED



















The books by my bed are a curious mix. Essays by my favourite writers - Updike, Coetzee, Les Murray - histories of the CIA and the modern Japanese state; there are two unread biographies of Dostoevsky and three books about the Nazi occupation of France. Many apologies if someone else can make more sense of this than I do; they should let me know. 

Are these books here to remind me of who I am, or who I want to be? Or something completely different. Are they the books I most want to read, or the ones I'm slowest to uptake? Are they the ones that make me feel the best about myself? The one I finished last, Matt Ridley's guide to the whole human genome, has fallen down the side of the bed. It's down there with all the dust, no reflection on how much I enjoyed it (a lot). 

Unfinished, but still feeling optimistic:
Gombrich, the Story of Art
Mathieu Enard, Zone
Mikhail Bulgakov, life of Molière

There just because I read and loved them, and can't bear to put them away:
The Sight of Death, T.J. Clark

There, and always will be:
Anna Freakin Karenina

3 Comments:

Blogger Danielle said...

I can relate to those piles by the bed! Mine are towering, too! :)

28 February 2009 at 14:51  
Blogger emmat said...

A couple of times one has spontaneously fallen over in the middle of the night. Now that really is a bump in the night...

1 March 2009 at 23:57  
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