Saturday, January 05, 2008

Books do furnish a room

On New Year's day, a friend sent me the link to an article in praise of books...good, solid books printed on real paper...the sort of books that teeter in piles beside my bed, that spill over from my shelves in the study, that I hoard as the most zealous dragon guards its jewels.
It's a good article - one I'm sure you'll enjoy - and with a happy heap of Christmas books still awaiting my attention, it connected instantly with me. After all, we've a house move only 3 months away - and our last move involved a very painful pruning process, from which I've only slowly recovered. This time, though, I'm happy to report that the 80feet of shelving dictated by the C of E for clergy studies is already fixed to the wall in the new vicarage (it couldn't actually be fitted into the study here at Privet Drive) and I'm not planning to leave anything behind...except maybe that volume I picked up when allowed free rein to plunder the shelves of a retiring priest.
Who could resist a paperback entitled
"Courtesans and Fishbones"? Sheer bliss - though the book itself turns out to be a scholarly work in an area right off my map...

Anyway - I digress (surely not!)...Several bloggers have decided to join Alex in her Reading Challenge to list every book consumed this year. I'm hoping that if I sign up too, it might encourage me to finish those I start. I think I'll aim to post once a week on a Saturday...Cathy has a clever little ticker widget too, QG is reviewing hers, while St Casserole, bless her heart, voices an anxiety I share, about admitting to some of the trash I read by way of relaxation.
Apparently all is grist to Alex's mill -
so, herewith my books for the first week of January in this year of our Lord 2008
(I'll only link the the worthwhile ones, I think....I'm sure you're more than capable of indulging your own fictional vices in the "amiable trash" category ;-) )

(I was privileged to read this before publication, so didn't follow it through Advent as assiduously as I would have otherwise...but it's a joy, truly - and something I'd warmly recommend for another year)

  • The Cat who went bananas - Lilian Jackson Baum
  • What Came before he shot her - Elizabeth George
Next week you can expect a marked decrease in fiction consumption, balanced, I trust, by something approaching to Serious Reading (though of course, given my customary "follow through" rate, you are equally likely never to hear anything about this again!)

ETA I ought to make it clear, perhaps, that the 80feet are the shelves actually provided by the church in every stipendiary clergy study (in theory at least)....our aggregate total of shelving is probably at least 3 times that...not to mention the window cills, piles on floors, stacks in corners...
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9 comments:

  1. Sue4:15 PM

    80 feet of shelving, huh?

    I've never thought about how many feet (feet? Aren't clergy houses metric yet?!) of shelving we have in the house. when we need more, we just buy another bookcase, usually. But out of interest I did a quick tally and I think we must have at least 120 feet of shelving in our bookcases. We need some more very soon.

    As for blogging books, that's something I've been doing for ages :-) I keep a separate blog of books read, with short reviews, called, not very originally, suesbookreviews.blogspot.com - I see from the stats that I read 124 books last year and 123 in 2006.

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  2. Unknown6:05 PM

    Three books already? Wow.

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  3. Happy2:03 AM

    80 feet?! That's glorious. I think I shall be lucky to gain 5 in the cubicle that shall one day be my office. :)

    Kathryn, I don't comment often, but I read your blog quite frequently, and I want to thank you for your writing. I love hearing your stories and have been encouraged both through what you've said and the quotations that you've shared over this past year. I hope you don't mind, but I've linked back to a couple of your posts over Christmas that were particularly helpful to me, so that some of my readers whom I think need to hear what you've had to say may benefit as well. If you do mind, tho, please let me know!

    Thanks again,
    Happy

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  4. Anonymous7:50 AM

    Not to be too pedantic or anything, but isn't that Lilian Jackson "Braun"?

    :)

    Sounds like a fun thing to do - maybe I'll do it too (although my reading is nowhere near as prolific as it once was...)

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  5. Disillusioned8:42 AM

    I like the idea of blogging the books I read. Thanks. Am in a reading phase just at the moment, so could be a good time to start.

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  6. St. Casserole2:13 PM

    Spelling pleasure reads correctly is optional, Dave. I can't recall the titles usually much less the authors.

    Here's to a great year of reading both academic and silly!

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  7. RevDrKate10:06 PM

    The C of E dictates the clegy studies shelving, eh? Gotta love it! I have no idea how many feet...only that it's not enough and like Topsy the books are spilling everywhere. Since I've already blown the blog every day challenge, thing sounds kind of fund. I am reading a ton of books...it is the finishing that is hard...we shall see! I may yet join up.

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  8. Anonymous10:40 PM

    Don't think my lot worry about bookshelf space, but they do check out the numbers of lavatories ! It's prob best not to ponder on what that reveals.

    Have just launched a blog of my own and linked you to it - hope that's OK.

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  9. Caroline11:29 PM

    oh do tell, how many feet of wheelchair accessible front door and toilet does the C of E dictate that a brand spnaking new vicarage has to have?

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