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Dec. 6th, 2013
A few of my favourite things
Dec. 6th, 2013 01:57 pm[December days masterpost; still a couple of slots open at the end of the month, if there's something you'd like to see me talk about!]
Books. I like books. And I got asked about them, so that's a win all around, I think.
I'm pretty happy to start out with "books I have literally carried halfway around the planet with me in hard copy": Staying Alive and its sequel anthologies, published by Bloodaxe Books. They're collections of modern poetry and they are fantastic. (To that section of my shelf I have in recent years added Emergency Kit, edited by Jo Shapcott and acquired in a second-hand book fair in the Lake District; a translation of Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets; and a miscellaneous collection of Brecht, Rilke, Duffy and Armitage.)
The Howl's Moving Castle series probably comes next. During the very first parts of my Year of Madness I can't remember doing anything much other than sleeping - I know other things must have happened, I just can't remember what. Next, I worked my way through most of the Studio Ghibli films for the first time; and after that, I was well enough to start reading again, and I devoured everything by Diana Wynne Jones I could get my hand on. They are still safe and comforting and something I will return to over and over again, because if nothing else they taste of getting better.
... and the same is true of the Susan books in the Discworld, especially of Soul Music and Hogfather and Thief of Time.
A more recent find was Malignant Sadness: Anatomy of Depression, by Lewis Wolpert. He's a biologist with chronic severe depression, and writes about both, in a style that is just exactly right for me: he talks about the history of its conceptualisation and treatment, how both have developed, and he intersperses it with just enough of his own life to make it clear that he too has walked that path without leaving me feeling voyeuristic; and with absolute precision and absolute grace he mentions, in passing, how inadequate language is to describe the experience. (Sonntag's Illness As Metaphor I find interesting and useful for similar reasons.)
This doesn't begin to scratch the surface of books I will enthusiastically reread and enthusiastically recommend, but it probably does a pretty good job of summarising the ones that feel most like home to me, at the moment.
Books. I like books. And I got asked about them, so that's a win all around, I think.
I'm pretty happy to start out with "books I have literally carried halfway around the planet with me in hard copy": Staying Alive and its sequel anthologies, published by Bloodaxe Books. They're collections of modern poetry and they are fantastic. (To that section of my shelf I have in recent years added Emergency Kit, edited by Jo Shapcott and acquired in a second-hand book fair in the Lake District; a translation of Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets; and a miscellaneous collection of Brecht, Rilke, Duffy and Armitage.)
The Howl's Moving Castle series probably comes next. During the very first parts of my Year of Madness I can't remember doing anything much other than sleeping - I know other things must have happened, I just can't remember what. Next, I worked my way through most of the Studio Ghibli films for the first time; and after that, I was well enough to start reading again, and I devoured everything by Diana Wynne Jones I could get my hand on. They are still safe and comforting and something I will return to over and over again, because if nothing else they taste of getting better.
... and the same is true of the Susan books in the Discworld, especially of Soul Music and Hogfather and Thief of Time.
A more recent find was Malignant Sadness: Anatomy of Depression, by Lewis Wolpert. He's a biologist with chronic severe depression, and writes about both, in a style that is just exactly right for me: he talks about the history of its conceptualisation and treatment, how both have developed, and he intersperses it with just enough of his own life to make it clear that he too has walked that path without leaving me feeling voyeuristic; and with absolute precision and absolute grace he mentions, in passing, how inadequate language is to describe the experience. (Sonntag's Illness As Metaphor I find interesting and useful for similar reasons.)
This doesn't begin to scratch the surface of books I will enthusiastically reread and enthusiastically recommend, but it probably does a pretty good job of summarising the ones that feel most like home to me, at the moment.