The Calm After the Storm

I have long since stopped believing that just by buying a book, I could - without the requisite effort - absorb its contents and become enlightened by it.
Well...I never really believed that, but you would have thought that I did, given the ridiculous acquisition of books during the dying days of my PhD. Books represented
knowledge (a good thing), therefore buying (= owning) books, means buying knowledge. Only it didn't. It just meant I had a large pile of unread books, which made me more and more uneasy, mocking me, deriding my inability to open the cover and do anything about it. Intellectual inertia. And the eventual end of the PhD, a huge pile-up of anxiety and a derailing of goals and good intentions.
Then the calm after the storm. The cleansing of guilt, the eventual ability to get hold of a book without any unrealistic expectations about what it could do for me. A book as a good thing, something to enjoy, to relax with, rather than a mute reproach.
Only just getting back on track some 18 months later, getting my reading mojo back, looking for things I will enjoy reading, that will transport me to a different world, at least temporarily.

Ah! Slight Prob....!

Still lovin' the Kindle, although one of its major drawbacks is becoming more apparent: my mother and I share a pretty similar taste in non-fiction, non-academic books which, over the years has led us to swap and enjoy various titles.

Now, of course, I have my portable reading device.

Just the other day I was minded to read Simon Sebag Montefiore's 'biography' of the city of Jerusalem, so within a minute(!) I had downloaded the electronic copy from Amazon.
It's a very enjoyable read, and written in the slightly gossipy style of a gripping historical narrative.
I just know that Mum would love it, but other than pass the Kindle over (which I am not going to do, all my other books are on it too, including my current fiction read, Stephen Fry's The Hippopotamus) I am potentially faced with the prospect of buying a hard copy for her to read. I don't think she'll buy it for herself - my father's a bit careful on the spending front (especially if he isn't likely to benefit, which he won't as he doesn't read - apart from the newspapers).
She may even buy it for me as a birthday present, because obviously I can't really tell her I've already got a digital copy, because that would make me feel mean as she would patently be unable to share it.

I'll probably wait until it comes out as a paperback, then get a copy to pass on to her.

So I'll have bought the book twice over. Curses!
I wonder if there's any facility for linking Kindles and sharing content? Probably not, because that would be open to massive abuse - think book-clubs just downloading one copy to share!
Although she's a bit of a technophobe (whilst aware of technological omnipresence - the parents think the novelty will wear off in a few years), it would be a brilliant step into the digital world, and if she got a 3G version they wouldn't even have to get the internet, a step my father has been resisting with every one of his eighty-four years!

A Kindled Cure

Okay.....I have to hold my hands up here and admit I LOVE my Kindle.
The Husband surprised me with one for Christmas. I was initially dubious whether I'd find it that useful, and being a devoted bibliophile was certain that it would never replace the physical attraction of a book but....uh huh....the more I got into it, the more indispensible it became.

A friend of mine, who also got one as a present, agrees that she, too, will probably never buy another work of fiction in hard or paperback format ever again. Relief! No more rootling through the oh-so-tempting three-for-two offers, looking for a third book that, in truth, we don't really want but feel we must buy to get our money's worth. Also, thanks to the brilliant facility of being able to download a sample chapter, no more buying of dud novels, ones which initially appeal but soon get chucked down at the side of the bed.
I've bought single issues of periodicals (not really interested enough in any one publication to suscribe) and am currently trying out a free two-week subscription for the Daily Telegraph. I am quite impressed by this facility - the paper magically appears on the Kindle around 7am and I can catch up on the news without getting out of bed. Plus no excess newsprint cluttering up the recycling bin.

Obviously there are some books that I just can't get hold of in Kindle format - the academic variety - and some are bizarrely expensive. I'm not going to pay over the hardback price for a book that I don't exactly 'have' physically, and I do like my 'library' of real print and paper. Plus academic books have a certain second-hand value. You certainly haven't got that if it's in electronic format! In fact, I'm not really sure what happens if your Kindle goes tits-up.

You can also upload PDFs (the bane of my life) onto it and the highlight/clippings facility means you can accumulate a lot of useful references and store them easily.

It's also very easy to read on a Kindle: I find back-lit computer screens rather hard to read from, but the soothing grey non-illuminated Kindle screen makes it no more tiring than an ordinary paper page.

One of the first books that I downloaded was The Fry Chronicles, the second part of Stephen Fry's autobiography. I had been expecting it from the in-laws, but it never materialised. Being short of a book over the hols, once I got my Kindle I went into a bit of a download frenzy (although much of the stuff I downloaded was free, being out of copyright). It was quite a good read, and having finished it -frustratingly it ends far short of the present day - went onto the Amazon site and downloaded Moab is My Washpot, volume one of Fry's autobiography. I had read it before, but on re-reading realised that I had forgotten much of it.

Other download purchases include Constantine Campbell's Keep Your Greek - not much more than the hastily compiled fruit of a blog (with some stunning editorial oversights - the transpositions of two Greek words and their meanings renders the whole book dubious); an interlinear Greek/English New Testament; the Grosmiths' Diary of a Nobody (free); the Discourses of Epictetus (free) and various samples: Susan Hill's The Little Hand (will probably purchase this after I've finished my current read), Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question (excellent - will definitely get later), Scarlett Thomas's Our Tragic Universe (hmm...dunno about this) and Mrs Fry's Diary (no, definitely not). I'm also dallying with The Spectator and The New Statesman, both of which I never bothered with in paper format (probably due to the price), but are proving to be excellent diversions.

A convert, then.

One of the best actual books I got just before Christmas was The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World by Guido Majno, a comprehensive survey of medecine and therapy across the ancient world from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, India, the Far East and Rome. Intriguing and stomach-turning, it kept me from my Kindle (until the paper turned up at 7) first thing in the morning over the holidays and slotted nicely in with my current side-project on the Roman physician Galen. I also got the only Loeb Classical Edition of Galen's work, a 1916 translation of On the Natural Faculties by A J Brock which I intend to work through, the Cambridge Companion to Galen (very hard going indeed!) and completely unrelated The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies (not really started yet).

Funnily enough, I went to an antiquarian bookfair run by the Provincial Book Fairs Association at the Knavesmire on Saturday. I'd missed the previous one due to family commitments (grumpily blogged about in my parablepsis blog) and was determined to attend this one. But in truth, I found it slightly disappointing. True, there were some lovely editions (a three-volume set of Linnaean botany with hand-tinted plates; a Rackham-illustrated Water Babies), but I was underwhelmed by my reaction to the lovingly buffed leather gold-tooled spines, even though some were within my budget. There were also a lot of book 'enthusiasts' there - and though I'm sure they can't all have smelly jumpers or fleeces, stained cord trousers and bottled-bottom glasses, it certainly seemed that way. Maybe I'm just sated with books and book-buying?

Books Ho!

Books are being acquired at a ridiculous rate, mostly because I am mid-thesis now and living so far from campus, it is often easier to buy a second-hand copy of a book than wait until I go down to uni. The academic books I buy do not really merit much of a mention, other than they are mostly commentaries and books on the background issues of various topics. Oh, and Kittel's ten volume monster Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, a real bargain as it was missing the index volume which I sourced from Abe Books for £12. Bargain! I may be tempted by the parallel volumes for the Old Testament (only three in all) as a Christmas present to myself.

One topic that has captured my interest in recent weeks is that of illness, injury and medecine in the first few centuries AD, so I am trying to get to grips with the works of Galen, the Roman physician. His writings remain largely unattended, save for a massive edition of his works by a guy called Kuhn, who translated much of it from the Greek into Latin. No too much of a problem for a classicist such as myself, although the lexis will need some fathoming to ensure accuracy. Still, it's the sort of task I relish and will keep me absorbed amongst the Christmas debris.

Having read two volumes of Karen Armstrong's autobiography and found much to pity and admire, I have decided that convent life is, after all, not for me. Not that I was qualified for it anyway. Extremely disqualified actually. I've got her book The Case for God lined up for some time in the near future, fairly near the top of my 'to-be-read' pile.

I am currently re-eading Rose Macauley's The Towers of Trebizond, which I picked up second-hand from the local Oxfam bookshop. I read it through the first time and was gripped by her deep learning, which is seldom seen in books today. It's a gentle and humorous (although ultimately sad) book describing her (fictional, I think) journey through Asia Minor, and the author happily ponders on subjects as diverse as the love life of a camel, spying, authorial integrity, death, religion, history and the soul. And none of it comes across as forced. A marvellous book, and probably my book of the year.

I am hoping that I might be given Stephen Fry's autobiography for Christmas. He is another author who wears his learning lightly, which rather annoys many less-educated folk. I just hope it's not too full of show-biz anecdotes. Whatever, it will be suitable fare for Boxing Day, no doubt.

I need to buy a gripping novel for the holiday period, the sort that you really anticipate reading first thing in the morning and last thing at night, but I am a bit uninspired at the moment. I think I need to discover a new (to me) author with a good back catalogue that I can get stuck into.

One of the things I must do over Christmas is to reorganise and dust my bookshelves. The Husband sort of promised to build an extension to the ones in the dining room, but in fact I need to rationalise what I have and possibly part with a few redundant items. I am massively reluctant to do so, but realistically things are starting to look like a mad person's house, where nothing is thrown away and the stairs are taken up with stacks of stuff. But I am not just fond of the books per se, but what they represent, which is a 'finding of myself' in my middle years after years of dithering about, producing children and keeping men happy.

Spiralling Out of Control

Just as I suspected, Jeremy Mercer's book Books, Bedbugs and Baguettes was a bit Meh! (how can a book successfully be both self-deprecating and self-regarding at the same time? Dunno, but it is!) but being in Paris, I read it anyway and enjoyed my pilgrimage to Shakespeare and Co. Would that it could have been a longer visit, but it was not to be, for reasons documented in one of my other blogs parablepsis.

Arriving home, I tucked into the remaining chapters of Crime and Punishment and, having finished, scratched my head as to its overall message. Did Raskolnikov really consider himself to be a man apart, above the law and punishment? Was he testing out this theory when he bludgeoned the old pawnbroker and her sister, or was he intent on digging himself out of debt and providing for his studies so that he could help mankind? Was he just deranged? Sick (he spent a lot of time in delirium)? Laden with moral qualms or totally amoral? He seemed to dance around the possibilities in turn, without settling on an answer, and his decision to hand himself in to the police (when he patently didn't feel guilty and had the opportunity to totally get away with the crime) was bizarre and in the end seemed to have less to do with the flaky transparent Sonya than his own perverse nature. He didn't actually seem sorry he committed murder. Naturally he hated Siberia, and seemed to hate the faithful girl who tagged along with him. Nasty piece of work.
I was in the Oxfam shop the other day and stumbled across the second part of Karen Armstrong's autobiography The Spiral Staircase that documents her difficulty in re-engaging with the world on leaving the convent that she had entered aged just seventeen and the various trials (suspected mental health problems) that she underwent before being finally diagnosed as an epileptic. She is one of my favourite biblical scholars (her work is a model of clarity and interesting insight) and I was vaguely aware that she had been in holy orders, but unaware of the whole story, or what she had been through. It is fascinating, and I recognise much of what she writes about (especially the ordeal of producing a doctoral thesis - the descrition of its failure at viva stage is gut-churning to read) and I have ordered online her Through the Narrow Gate to pad out her past as a nun. I picked up The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macauley, also from the Oxfam theological book shelf. I've been looking for a copy of this out-of-print book for ages, having heard it nominated as the 'best travel book of all time' and appearing to have a bit in common with Sisters of Sinai, which I read with interest last year. Happily it's just the sort of weather (wet, cold and windy) to snuggle up with a book. Since the Husband and Bright-Eyed Boy are out tonight, I shall do just that!

Sur le Continent

Looking forward to our trip to Paris via the Eurostar: just got fingers crossed that the industrial action against the proposed retirement age doesn't obstruct us too much!
To that end I have bought Jeremy Mercer's Books, Bedbugs and Baguettes set in Paris's legendary Shakespeare & Co. book shop. If I'm honest, I'm not expecting too much from it, just a warm, fuzzy, French sort of ambiance. I don't think it'll last me so I'm taking the Husband's copy of Neither Here nor There: travels in Europeby Bill Bryson, which had me crying with laughter (a rare occurrence) when I read a snippet on parking in Rome. The Husband is just moving on to BB's A Walk in the Wood which is good holiday fare. Daughter #3 has finished The Bell Jar so I got a copy of Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle which provides a good contrast with Plath's angsty novel, a real feel-good book. the Bright-Eyed Boy still really hasn't found his comfort-level bookwise. Having tried Darren Shan's Demonata series, he still seems to prefer fact-based books and has made a diversion into Jeremy Clarkson and, most recently, Charlie Booker's Screen Burn. I guess he'll come round to literature-proper in the end - the important thing is to keep on reading.

I've gone a bit crazy on Amazon recently, purchasing a lot of commentaries and scholarly stuff for my studies. Most don't really rate a mention, but one that does - on account of its sheer loveliness is the third edition of Michael Holmes' Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations. It's been produced in the style of a Bible, with leather-cloth cover and onion-skin paper and is a quite delightful thing to possess. As luck would have it, it arrived just as I needed to look up Clement of Rome's familiarity with the Corinthian correspondence, so out of the packet and onto the desk.
I'm currently making my way slowly through Crime and Punishment and, although I occasionally skim over a page or so, I'm actually rather enjoying it - if that's the word. It's quite uncompromisingly brutal in places and reveals well the psychological agonies of a sick mind. But what I could really do with is a glossary of characters and names - you lose track eventually as the cast increases in number, and even share patronymics!

The Idiot and a Potentially Evil (Buying) Eye

The close of one of my thesis chapters means the opening of another: another text to pull apart and examine with an eye on the grammatical issues that constitute my PhD. One of the comments that my supervisor made was that I 'didn't seem to use many commentaries'. Well, that's true, because (a) I wanted the ideas that came out of my writing to be mine and not some rewarmed opinions of another and (b) most of the ones I have to hand are quite elderly and (literally) fusty. I am quite pernickety when it comes to commentaries - I have to be, as it MUST nod towards the Greek text. Some are much better than others: the old International Critical Commentary series is superb, and I have been lucky enough to pick up a number of these from my local theological second-hand bookshop (The Barbican Bookshop in York).
They do look rather wonderful and serious on the bookshelf (uniformly dark green with gold titles) and are a tribute to the 'steeped-in-learning scholarship' of the late 19th/early 20th century. I also have Bishop Lightfoot's 19th century commentaries on the Pauline epistles - it's a real pity he didn't complete the set - which are a bedrock of any serious textual work, often referred back to in the ICC books. I've borrowed a few from the uni. library too. I don't have much time for the overtly devotional commentaries whose only intent is to bedazzle the faithful with praising and the party-line (mostly American, evangelical and conservative) without bothering to pick up on the serious historical and critical issues......let's be frank, PROBLEMS, belittering the texts.

Confronted by the need to update my academic wardrobe, er, bookshelf, I bit the bullet and bought the volumes in the New International Commentary on the New Testament that deal with the 'authentic' Pauline epistles. They cost a fair bit, but now my commentary work has been dragged into the late 1990's rather than the 1890's, and in truth, that's what my bursary money is for. They are the product of some serious scholarship and although you do glimpse the occasional flash of devotional petticoat, the detailed attention to the Greek text is exemplary.
Trouble is, I am running out of shelf-space - again! I may have to sell some of my old Classics stuff.

Tackling a new epistle is rather daunting, so I was going to spend a week boning up on the Corinthian background (revisiting some stuff tackled in my final undergrad year), but on reading introductory material to 2 Corinthians, I realise that this is going to be no walk in the park: the Greek text looks like a bag of spanners, like someone has dropped a stack of papers on the way to the Xerox, picked them up and duplicated them without regard for order or coherence.
Oh dear! I've certainly got my work cut out!

The Husband is s-l-o-w-l-y making his way through the latest Bill Bryson (he can't seem to stay awake for more than two pages per night). I've just finished Beryl Bainbridge's According to Queeney, a fictional account of the relationship between Samuel Johnson (he of the dictionary) and his 'patrons' the Thrale family, as recounted by the oldest daughter Hester (or Queeney as she is known to differentiate her from her mother). I really enjoyed it and will keep an eye out for more Bainbridges in the charity shops.
I've moved onto Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, partly because Daughter #1 recommended The Idiot to me (although I think she's stopped reading it now for some reason). Serious Russian literature is a bit of a lacuna for me, although I did actually read War and Peace once (meandering and quite dull, I seem to remember) and 'enjoyed' Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward and A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (I didn't actually get that the former was a satire on Communism). I am quite surprised at how easy C & P is to read - kudos to the translator - but sometimes I find the narrative arc of older literature unsatisfying and I end up scratching my head as to what's supposed to have happened. Or stop caring if it's too digressive. We'll see.

However, the point of this post was that I bought the Bainbridge book as a result of seeing a documentary on her fascinating and eccentric life: she had died just a week or so before. Daughter #1 was very impressed by the job the translator (Alan Myers) had done on The Idiot (I was looking out for a C & P by him), but I found myself reading his obituary in the papers within the same week.
More spookily, I ordered, through AbeBooks, a 2-volume set of Margaret Thrall's ('magisterial') commentary on 2 Corinthians and.......no sooner had I submitted my order than I read on a theological website that she had just died! Perhaps I should lay off buying stuff for a while!