On Reading
Warning: long, rambling, confessional entry ahead.
I am inhaling novels.
This should not be news. I have all the outside marks of someone who loves reading, book culture. (You know: I look good in sweaters, armchairs. I have the right kind of glasses. And, um, I sorta have not one but two degrees in English literature.) Despite all this, I've harboured a dark secret: I stopped reading novels five years ago. Why? I'm not sure. I got busy. There were websites to make, theses to write, I was busy doing coursework and coding and drinking and reading essays about software developers and Lessig and Haraway and Turkle and Stallman and those dreadful cyberculture anthologies with fake l33t on the cover. So I just stopped. And I forgot that a) clearly I loved reading at one point in time, and b) what reading is like.
Then, three things happened:
I moved from Canada to London. There are books set in London. Hell, every book is set in London. I had no idea this would change the experience of reading until I got here. It does, a lot. (Note to all my old post-colonial CanLit profs who warbled on about 'writing from the margins' and liminality and stuff: Goddamnit. I guess you really were on to something. Place matters.)
I started a daily commute. Suddenly there is time.
I discovered the wonder that is World's End Books in Chelsea. I've started making a weekly Sunday pilgrimage to this delicious, eccentric little shop. Check out this week's haul:
- For Your Eyes Only, Ian Fleming (Vintage 1960 Pan edition, natch)
- Calligrammes, Apollinaire
- Night Train, Martin Amis
- The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
- Hey Nostradamus!, Douglas Coupland
...all obtained, I kid you not, for ten fricking pounds. Love. So I've been reading, voraciously -- in the past week it's been Hornby's High Fidelity (how appropos) and Delillo's Cosmopolis, and frankly, it's messing me up. I feel stoned half the time. I FORGOT WHAT READING IS LIKE. I forgot that all I used to want to be is a writer. All these rich, bizarre perspectives wrapped in paper. I have two degrees in this shit and I FORGOT. And now it's making me a bit strange. Like, for example, I somehow thought this topic was appropriate for an SG journal entry. Hello?
On Spy-Themed Martini Parties at the Canadian Embassy
I have no idea where that stuffed cat came from. I blame gin martinis. Good times!
(A couple more embassy shots in my pics.)
Warning: long, rambling, confessional entry ahead.
I am inhaling novels.
This should not be news. I have all the outside marks of someone who loves reading, book culture. (You know: I look good in sweaters, armchairs. I have the right kind of glasses. And, um, I sorta have not one but two degrees in English literature.) Despite all this, I've harboured a dark secret: I stopped reading novels five years ago. Why? I'm not sure. I got busy. There were websites to make, theses to write, I was busy doing coursework and coding and drinking and reading essays about software developers and Lessig and Haraway and Turkle and Stallman and those dreadful cyberculture anthologies with fake l33t on the cover. So I just stopped. And I forgot that a) clearly I loved reading at one point in time, and b) what reading is like.
Then, three things happened:
I moved from Canada to London. There are books set in London. Hell, every book is set in London. I had no idea this would change the experience of reading until I got here. It does, a lot. (Note to all my old post-colonial CanLit profs who warbled on about 'writing from the margins' and liminality and stuff: Goddamnit. I guess you really were on to something. Place matters.)
I started a daily commute. Suddenly there is time.
I discovered the wonder that is World's End Books in Chelsea. I've started making a weekly Sunday pilgrimage to this delicious, eccentric little shop. Check out this week's haul:
- For Your Eyes Only, Ian Fleming (Vintage 1960 Pan edition, natch)
- Calligrammes, Apollinaire
- Night Train, Martin Amis
- The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
- Hey Nostradamus!, Douglas Coupland
...all obtained, I kid you not, for ten fricking pounds. Love. So I've been reading, voraciously -- in the past week it's been Hornby's High Fidelity (how appropos) and Delillo's Cosmopolis, and frankly, it's messing me up. I feel stoned half the time. I FORGOT WHAT READING IS LIKE. I forgot that all I used to want to be is a writer. All these rich, bizarre perspectives wrapped in paper. I have two degrees in this shit and I FORGOT. And now it's making me a bit strange. Like, for example, I somehow thought this topic was appropriate for an SG journal entry. Hello?
On Spy-Themed Martini Parties at the Canadian Embassy
I have no idea where that stuffed cat came from. I blame gin martinis. Good times!
(A couple more embassy shots in my pics.)
VIEW 12 of 12 COMMENTS
I know what you mean about location. It's like seeing a Woody Allen movie in Tottenham as opposed to Manhattan or reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being having never left your family farm in Luton.