Some Books I Have Been Living With

These are a selection of the books I have been involved with lately.

I finished The History of Love this morning, it had some very beautiful passages. For example;

7. THERE IS A PHOTOGRAPH OF MY MOTHER THAT NO ONE HAS EVER SEEN

In the fall, my mother went back to England to start university. Her pockets were full of sand from the lowest place on earth. She weighed 104 pounds. There's a story she sometimes tells about the train ride from Paddington Station to Oxford when she met a photographer who was almost completely blind. He wore dark sunglasses, and said he'd damaged his retinas a decade ago on a trip to Antarctica. His suit was perfectly pressed, and he held his camera in his lap. He said he saw the world differently now, and it wasn't necessarily bad. He asked if he could take a picture of her. When he raised up the lens and looked through it, my mother asked what he saw. "The same thing I always see," he said. "Which is?" "A blur," he said. "So I will know what I've been looking at." (38)

I started Norwegian Wood this morning which I got from the university library in two very small volumes. So far it is good, very poetic, quite unlike what I normally read in style.

This book arrived in the mail for me today, I have read it before, but it was one I longed to have my own copy of. Anne Fadiman writes these wonderfully buoyant essays about her life and who she is and her love of books.They are very life affirming and funny. I absolutely recommend them to everybody.
On being a night owl:
George [husband] is an early riser, a firm believer in seizing the day while it is still fresh. I am not fully alive until the sun sets. In the morning, George is quick and energetic, while I blink in the sunlight, move as if through honey, and pour salt in the coffee. When we turn off the light at 11:30 - too late for him, too early for me - George falls instantly asleep, while I, mocked by the bird that slumbers above my head, arrange and rearrange the pillows, searching for the elusive cool sides" (62).