one hundred and twenty-six

If I were to ever get a tattoo (sometimes I am tempted, but am so fickle that anything involving permanence freaks me out) I would want it to look something like this lovely little fox, a marginal drawing in Gerald of Wale's 'History and Topography of Ireland'.

(ps the British Library's online gallery of illuminated manuscripts in wonderful)

one hundred and sixteen

Another to add to the songs that make you want to pick up a book list:

First love, Emmy the Great

 

in other news, today i look like this:

one hundred and four

After lavish Christmas come the lean days of Lent
when the flesh is tested with fish and simple food.
Then the world's weather wages war on winter:
cold shrinks earthwards and clouds climb;
sun-warmed, shimmering rain comes showering
onto meadows and fields where flowers unfurl,
and woods and grounds wear a wardrobe of green.
Birds burble with life and build busily
as summer spreads, settling on slopes as
                                          it should.

from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, trans. Simon Armitage

Oh, summer.

eighty-two

Currently rereading the His Dark Material trilogy (books are a fine breakup remedy). I am quite taken with the bookcovers of the Hebrew version of the series:

Northern Lights

The Subtle Knife

The Amber Spyglass

I first read them when I was thirteen or fourteen, and I think that revisiting any book read (and loved) as a teenager is such a powerful experience: it brings back that intense sense of adventure and possibility, of absorbing myself so completely into a different world and into the story itself.

I don't think that 'adult' books are any less imaginative than those for children, but rarely now do I submerge myself in the world of a book in the same way; it's just not the same experience. It isn't lesser, or less-involved... but perhaps it is not quite so consuming - perhaps not quite so selfish (not imagining oneself at the centre of the book, letting the characters be themselves).

eighty-one

I was flicking through my ipod recently (I thought I should make an effort to listen to more than four bands) and settled upon an album I like a fair bit years ago, but hadn't had much time for since: Fionn Regan's The End of History.



Somewhere nearish the end of the song above, Fionn mentions a book by Paul Auster, Timbuktu. I read that book because of this song (he also mentions Saul Bellow, but I never quite had the energy to try). And I enjoyed it; it's narrated by a dog, Mr Bones, and follows his life as the pet of a homeless man, Willy G. Christmas.

It got me wondering whether I'd been introduced to any other authors or books in this manner.

In Go Long, Joanna Newsom plays upon the tale of Bluebeard, a terrifying aristocrat who makes his way through several wives, violently murdering each one. The myth follows his newest, young wife and her discovery of the fate of her predecessors. I am in complete awe of the song, and scouted out as much as I could about the myth... which led me to Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, a fantastical collection of short stories (the title story being that of Bluebeard).



I think they are the only two that have directly led to me reading a mentioned / connected author; has anyone else found a book because of a song?

And of course, songs that reference books or authors is a whole category in itself; maybe I should make a mixtape.... what could be on it?

seventy-five

'I looked at Pip and for a split second I felt as though she were nobody special in the larger scheme of my life. She was just some girl who had tied me to her leg to help her sink when she jumped off the bridge. Then I blinked and was in love with her again.'

Something that needs nothing, Miranda July

seventy-four

A.J. Russell image of the celebration following the driving of the "Last Spike" at Promontory Summit, U.T., May 10, 1869

'In the course of the nineteenth century, time ceased to be a phenomenon that linked humans to the cosmos and became one administered by technicians to link industrial activities to each other. It changed the way people imagined their world... Midway through that century, Henry David Thoreau was living at Walden Pond, outside the community but near the railroad line. Standard time had not yet regulated America, but the railroad already dominated the experience of time. Thoreau commented, 'I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same feeling that I do the rising of the sun, which is hardly more regular. Their train of clouds stretching far behind and rising higher and higher, going to heaven while the cars are going to Boston, conceals the sun for a minute and casts my distant field into the shade, a celestial train beside which the petty train of cars which hugs the earth is but the barb of the spear... They go and come with such regularity and precision, that the farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one well-conducted institution regulates a whole country.' The railroad had eclipsed the sun.'

Rebecca Solnit, Motion Studies: Time, Space & Eadward Muybridge

sixty-six

Apples I Have Eaten, by Jonathan Gerken

Jonathan Gerken chronicles 47 different varieties of apple gathered one autumn in California. Each apple was locally sourced, photographed and then eaten by Gerken - and he made an effort to find those apples not readily available in shops, like the Goldrush, Prarie Spry and Hidden Rose (good names).

Image from Book by Its Cover

Image from Book by Its Cover

This reminds me that it's nearly apple season. I cannot wait.

sixty-three

danse macabre

From the 1493 Nuremburg Chronicle

Now waggles the leg, and now wriggles the thigh,

As the troop with strange gestures advance,

And a rattle and clatter anon rises high,

As of one beating time to the dance. - Goethe, Totentanz

Holbein

My brain has been in my bones of late - maybe it is because it is already getting colder at night, and a chill has crept in past my flesh and settled in them. I've been drawn to all things skeletal, these lovely intricate illustrations in particular: they depict the dance of death, a popular motif in medieval Europe that reminded people of their mortality and the folly of human ambition; humans may construct social hierarchies, but we are all equal in death.

Book of Hours, Paris, c.1507

Dance of Death, Paris, 1486

Also, I love woodcuts. I wish books still had them.

thirty

my sister gave me a waterstones gift voucher for my birthday- with forty pounds on it, wow. and my brother gave me thirty pounds worth of book tokens. that's seventy pound of books. seven-oh. hang on a sec whilst i explode from happiness. now i have to work out how to spend it....

i bought philip hoare's leviathan or, the whale a couple of days ago, and today i got the bell jar by sylvia plath (i have been intending to buy it for about a year now, i do things very slowly), and ordered the cheese and the worms by carlo ginzburg. i love browsing in bookshops (yes, even the big corporate chain ones), even (especially) when i don't have anything particular to search for; i like the messy rainbow of bookspines, the jumble of fonts, the little handwritten staff recommendations- alas, this only seems to be a feature of waterstones stores. plus, at the moment there is a cute guy working in my local (i talk of bookshops like they are pubs...oh dear) even if he does tuck his tshirt into his jeans. oh cute bookshop boy, why do you do that?

the only problem i have is that my local waterstones is far too small. when i say this, please bear in mind my slightly skewed version of small; after all, it has two floors, and i spent about 45 minutes milling around in there today...still, compared to the mammoth inner london stores, it is but a baby. i was fantastically pleased, therefore, to find out that i can use my giftcard ONLINE. i do not have to rely on the limited stock of the nearest waterstones. oh the wonders of the internet! i prompty ordered the book of other people, edited by zadie smith; i borrowed this from the library a while back and it is glorious, but apparantly not popular enough for my suburban waterstones.

have i mentioned waterstones enough to apply for advertising fees yet?

now i have nought to do but sit and await its arrival. let's hope royal mail doesn't lose it, or misdirect it, or decide that packages are far too much hassle to deliver because, you know, they're heavy and all.

this is what i wore today:



the little darling on the ladder is nemo. she is the loveliest, dribbliest little cat in the world.