The beginnings of routine

Hello again – starting to get into a routine with this now. Surrounded by snow, not too deep but cold - perfect excuse to stay indoors, surrounded by the biblio-mystery (& related title) stacks which can’t be missed and, climbing up to the study, spied for the umpteenth time, Susan Hill’s Howards End is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home and read:

“I pursued the elusive book through several rooms and did not find it in any of them, but each time I did find at least a dozen, perhaps two dozen, perhaps two hundred, that I had never read.”

Two hundred books unread… safe to say that’s my experience (bound to have dipped into some of them…) and more, oodles more - decades of collecting providing an unwieldy though comprehensive but never complete collection - some GA becoming possibles for reissue (or not) - hence titles recently available through OREON & Galileo.

Delighted to find an encouraging extract from Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, referencing Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose - one of my 100 favourite books), philosopher, writer and book collector:

“The library should contain as much of what you don’t know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an anti-library.”

Enough said - picking one up, soon absorbed - glorious!

Of course, when responding to a certain frequent question - ‘we’ve got that - want to borrow it?’ my wife might well say ‘and pass it not back when you’ve finished it!’ And the ensuing hunt sometimes fails miserably (we’ve few rooms) - and sometimes there may be good reason why it can’t be found…

Oh - some recent additions to my booky-book stacks - Revenge of the Librarians: Cartoons by Tom Gauld (9781838858216) and Remainders of the Day: More Diaries from the Bookshop, Wigtown (9781800812420) by Shaun Bythell - both glorious laugh-out-loud treats!

One from the attic: a Pan Books edition of The Black Spectacles by John Dickson Carr. Published in the USA as The Problem of the Green Capsule, ‘ most people are absolutely incapable of describing just what they see’ - mysterious poisonings have brought terror to an English village - Dr Fell summoned to help the police with their enquiries. This classic title is to be reissued in March 2023 by the British Library (9780712354820).

As for what’s next to be read - just a few out of these - have polished off the Cavanagh and the Disher - both living up to expectations!


That’s all for now

• ‘til next time!
  

RR

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Books mentioned:
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Susan Hill Howard's End is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home 
​Nicholas Taleb The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable 
Umberto Eco The Name of the Rose
Tom Gould Revenge of the Librarians: Cartoons 
Shaun Bythell Remainders of the Day: More Diaries from the Bookshop, Wigtown 
John Dickson Carr The Black Spectacles