Like our resident Librarian gnome, Mitchell, I like to read. Too much probably (just like Mitch - every time I look at him he always has his head buried in a book). And to make things worse, I also like to read online as well. But worst of all, definitely the worstest of the worstest, I also like bookshops. They're a major danger zone for me. It's rare that I don't leave a bookshop without some kind of book under my arm. Bookaholism, I think it's called. (Fellow Sydney garden blogger Chookie sometimes struggles with it, too). I'm a sufferer but I don't want to be helped (see, I haven't hit rock bottom yet). As a consequence, my 'to read' pile continues to grow. I might have to retire, just to catch up on reading. Let me explain in a few photos, plus a couple more words and links (which might seem like an ad for Amazon, except they're not).
This is Mitchell, doing all day what I would like to do all day – reading (well, that's when I'm not gardening, cooking, going to movies, eating, socialising, riding motorcycles, blogging and reading online, that is).
And this, approximately, is my 'to read' pile. You see the problem? Exactly. It's not too many books, it's not enough time. Work will just have to step aside for a year or two and make room for the finer things in life.It's an eclectic collection of fiction and non-fiction.
In the fiction section there's always some kind of detective uncovering the unpleasant details of life. Over the last few years Italian skulduggery has roped me in. Next on the list it's Andrea Camilleri, someone I haven't read yet but who has been recommended to me. As I have read all of Donna Leon's books about Venice-based Commissario Guido Brunetti and most of Michael Dibdin's books about Aurelio Zen, who uncovers evil all over Italy, I am looking forward to making the acquaintance of Inspector Montalbano, who no doubt has his hands full in Sicily.
But not all the fiction there is disreputably criminal: Margaret Attwood, Carol Shields and Tim Winton are waiting patiently for me to get back to them once more. And one of these days I am going to enjoy "The Bridge on the Drina" by Ivo Andric, a novel loaned to me by my workmate and good friend Zora. Andric is a Nobel Prize winner, and this novel is a voyage into the heart and soul of the Balkans.
In the non-fiction section it gets weird. Right now I'm two-thirds the way through a wonderful book by Fred Kaplan called "1959" and you guessed it, it's all about 1959. So much happened back then, including the invention of the microchip which makes blogging and everything else computery happen. And the founding of Motown (the record label), the launch of the contraceptive pill, Sputnik, the first US soldiers killed in Vietnam, and lots more (eg, the treatment of African-Americans back then was just appalling - and they didn't call them African-Americans, either).
There are no less than three books there by the wonderful Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf ('Origins', a Maalouf family history that spends a lot of time in Cuba, 'The Crusades Through Arab Eyes', and 'Leo the African', about a 16th-century traveller). I first came across Amin Maalouf via his poetic, imagined life of Omar Kayyam, called 'Samarkand'. I can't recommend that book highly enough (of course I don't have a copy, having repeatedly given it to friends to read). It is a beautiful piece of writing.
But there are also books to read on Aborigines living on riverbanks while Sydney grew around them, Russian home life during Stalin's rule (no fun, apparently), the Arab contribution to the Western intellectual tradition (much bigger than you might think), what happened during and after Cyclone Katrina (yikes), Christopher Hitchens trying to explain himself (oh, yes?), and a couple more.
And then, not in the pile, there are motorcycle magazines, daily newspapers and, of course, gardening magazines (not to mention websites as well). My poor eyes. I really need to win Lotto straight away, so I can retire and just devote myself to hanging out with Mitchell in the backyard, gardening and reading.
