posted by Lily on books

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Do you remember that scene in “Out of Africa” when Karen first arrives in Kenya and she is upstairs at the club in Denys’ room.  It is full of books – there are stacks on the floor and overfilling the bookcases.  Karen – a great reader – is delighted and asks Berkeley Cole if Denys lends his books.  No, Berkeley replies ruefully, he cannot stand it when friends fail to return the books.  He would rather lose a friend, than lose a book.

Now I’m not saying …. ;-) … nevertheless this moment has always stuck in my mind, ’cause to me, books are one of the nutrients of life.  I love scanning the shelves, immersing myself in the wonderful covers and typefaces that make books the greatest decorative items in a room, holding them, inhaling their scent, and of course, reading them.  Sadly, I’m not a library person at all.  If I want to read it, I want to possess it.  I want it to take its place in the Lily Library where I can enjoy its company.  And if I don’t like it, I cheerfully box it up and drop it off to the thrift store so someone else can take it home.

I love having a stack of books beside my bed – a book for when I’m in need of cosiness, a book for when I’m feeling sharp and want a challenge, a book that opens my eyes to something outrageous or amazing.  I love to finish my day by reading at least a few pages in bed, be it sprawled under the fan or snuggled in flannel.  As for books and motherhood – reading with and to Abby is one of the most blissful joys of my life.  I don’t think there is any better way to share myself with Abby.

Now that I work in a bookstore – oh my goodness! And I thought working in a quilt store was tantamount to giving an alcoholic the keys to the drinks cabinet!  Not only may I indulge myself every week, but I can bring home an endless stream of bookish treats for Abby and Julian!  They weren’t that keen on fabric.

So I thought I might share with you what we’re reading and loving …

The book I want the daughter to read :: “The Prince of Mist” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.  Awesome writer.  Spanish – I really like Spanish writers.  Wrote the exquisite “The Shadow of the Wind”.  It’s about 13 year old Max who has to leave his home and the city and move, with his family, to a small town by the sea.  The war is raging and his father is afraid for his family.  Surely a quiet life away from the drama and violence of the city will be safer.  Huh!  Not this seaside village, filled with magic, mystery and sinister going ons.  I’ve only read the first chapter and I’m hooked – Zafon’s writing reminds me of the books I read as a child … descriptions that you can lose yourself in and settings you long to disappear into.  How about this … “Max’s first impression of the town, judging from the station and the few houses he could see, their roofs peeping timidly over the surrounding trees, was that it looked like one of those miniature villages, the sort you got with train sets, where the imaginary inhabitants were in danger of falling off a table if they wandered too far.”  ooooh!  lovely huh!  So Abby is reading it, slowly, but she is devouring this …

The book the daughter loves to read ::  A bit of fluffy teenage piffle really.  But in a rather wholesome way – “Now and Zen” by Linda Gerber.  Part of a series called “Students Across the Seven Seas” and I have to confess, I adored “Julie the Exchange Student” when I was Abby’s age.  I must have read it ten times and LONGED to be Julie (she was Australian and went to the US).  In this book, Nori Tanaka – half Japanese, half American, visits Japan as an exchange student.  There’s a handsome German exchange student to fall in love with, an irritating room mate from back home (that gets her comeuppance later on), and lots of interesting detail about life in Japan, its culture and traditions, and some of the lovely places to visit.  Abby is besotted with Japan, studying Japanese, loves drawing manga and watching Hayao Miyazaki films – so she thinks this is the bee’s knees.  There are a heap in the series – England, Spain, Austria, China, Italy, Sweden, Finland.  All different writers.  And Abby wants them all.  I’m cool with this – it’s kind of like pubescent Magic Treehouse :-)

The book the daughter and I are reading together ::  “Toby Alone” by Timothee de Fombelle.  Ah, Toby. This is a wonderful, glorious, moving, thought provoking book.  It is about a wee family of three – and by wee, I mean they are all less than 2 mm tall – Mama and Papa Lolness and their son Toby, who live in a huge oak tree, home to hundreds of fellow wee folk.  However, Toby and his parents have been exiled to the lower branches because Papa Lolness is a scientist with heretical views and a strong bent for conservation.  His research leads him to conclude that the TREE is a living organism and that they must halt all tunnelling and treat it with respect and care.  The writing is beautiful, and the descriptions are mind blowing in that you have to keep adjusting your perception to teeny weeny weeny and then imagine what it is Fombelle is really talking about.  We have to stop every few paragraphs and talk it over – then sit in awed and contemplative silence before going on.  It’s fantastic.  We’re loving it.

I read a couple of chapters out loud every night.  We sit all around the house for this – sometimes at the kitchen table, sometimes on the sofa, sometimes curled up in my big bed.  But reading together is something we have done since I was pregnant and Abby was a wee being inside me.  I read all the winnie the pooh books to her before she was born.  We would read up to 15 books a day when she was little, and once she was over two, and still breast feeding (we breast fed until she was four), we read our way through the Narnia books, the Little House books, Charlotte’s Web and more.  We had good morning titty and good night titty and it would last half an hour or so whilst we read.  Abby still remembers this … it is such an amazing thing to have shared and I don’t mind telling you that Abby is truly gifted in the language arts and communication.  She is part of the school’s enrichment progamme for English and at her recent parent teacher interview, her English teacher offered to provide one on one sessions simply because she loves Abby and considers her the most exceptional child she has ever taught.  It must have been all the good morning titty!

The book I have just finished ::   “The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag” by Alan Bradley.  Bradley is a Scottish journalist and this is his second novel in a new series of “detective” stories in which the detective is Flavia de Luce – an 11 year old with a penchant for chemistry and trying out poisons on her older sisters.  They are FABULOUS reads.  Set in 1950 in a small English village, the de Luce’s live in the local manor – they are the local gentry.  Father de Luce has returned rather shell shocked from the war and spends his days poring over his stamp collection, the two older girls – Feely (ophelia) and Daffy (daphne) are devoted to the piano and novels respectively and Flavia is utterly immersed in every minutae of the village.  Add Gladys the bicycle, Dogger the Gardener and Mrs. Mullet the horror of cooks and I am in Anglophile heaven.  Again, I am a complete sucker for good descriptive language and these books are also fabulously constructed – unlike many detective stories, the reader trots alongside Flavia all the way and everything unravels in a fabulously eccentric yet logical way.  AWESOME.  Write faster Mr. Bradley!

The book I am off to bed to start :: “The Spy Game” by Georgina Harding tells the story of a small girl whose mother disappears one freezing morning in January 1961.  Anna is 8 and really has no idea where her mother has gone, but as the years pass, begins to believe that her brother’s wildly imaginative tales of their mother as a spy for Eastern Germany may be true.  Listen to Anna when she describes waiting for the policeman to come and tell them something terrible has happened to her mother ” It would be black and white; black and white like the postman’s telegram, because this after all was 1961, because I was eight, because war was the confrontation of good and evil and the soldiers on our side were heroes, because I watched television, because we did not have colour then.”  Ooooh, I cannot wait to hop into bed with my hot water bottle and get stuck into this.

The book I will tell you more about later in the week :: “Dewey Readmore Books”.  It is so warmly written, so very entertaining, and the start of something new and lovely for our family.  You’ll see :-)