On books
On Sunday, our bookclub discussion about The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris became something deeply fascinating. The majority of us had considered this as a book about a fellow who was basically ‘normal’, but who lapsed into episodes of madness brought on by physical distress (if my legs made me walk all night through a New York winter I’d go mad too!). But then there was another member who basically thought that everything after a particular point in the book was madness, and that some events, which most of us took as real accounts, were actually hallucinating versions of visits to the hospital. This did actually start to make some sense, as we realised that other things we’d just accepted didn’t make so much sense. In the end we were all sitting around in the café, shaking our heads and starting to laugh about our inability to separate truth from madness. We felt like we’d, genuinely "literally", lost our grasp on reality. The trick of the book is, that being written from the fellow’s perspective, of course it’s reality for him, so that’s how you see his world. No wonder this book was making me feel all queer at the time. We then started to read out and compare some of the dust jacket blurbs about the book, and some of the brief recommendations inside, and realised that very few people seemed to actually understand what this book was. It was mind-blowing. If I had the time and inclination I’d now read it again, but I probably won’t.
Other books I have in the pile (when normally I have no such pile) at the moment are:
Mirror Mirror by Graham Beynon – book on identity that was reviewed and recommended at a women’s morning at my church last year. So far, so good (and it has good reviews by Tim Chester and Richard Coekin). I probably need to start at the beginning again though, because I’ve taken it too slowly.
The Marriage Builder by Larry Crabb – yeah, I know. But in doing that book meme recently I looked at my books by Larry Crabb and noticed I hadn’t read this one (for obvious reasons) so I flicked through the introduction, and got sucked in. It’s really quite apt to some aspects of my glossing post about the dating scene and what have you (I just took that post down, because I decided it was an out-loud raving, of little use to anyone, that needed a few more correctives and didn’t need to be preserved for all time). I have a number of married friends who tell me this is the best book they ever read on marriage. No doubt others would say otherwise, and it’s older now, so many books have been written since. But, it says some very helpful things, which do apply to all relationships (though there's a section I think I am going to skip!).
One to One bible reading by David Helm. I haven’t really started this yet, but I need to.
Romola, by George Eliot. Still on this one, her historical novel set in Florence.
The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton. This is not as esoteric as it sounds. It’s about the influence of our built surrounds on us. I’ve also got his book on The Romantic Movement in the pile, for some time in the future.
Once I am finished this crochet dress, I am going to clean up this pile!