I bought books
Monday, April 11, 2005
Already carrying a bag filled with more reading material than I could possibly look at during a week's skiing holiday, I let myself drift into Gatwick North Terminal's main bookshop during a brief delay before boarding our plane. I left the shop with a copy each of Neal Ascherson's Stone Voices and Simon Gray's The Smoking Diaries.
Needless to say, the stuff I had packed to read didn't leave the bag all week - or since. I have been switching between the two books, so different in almost every way. Except that neither is fiction, of course. The Ascherson is a meditation on the physical presence of Scotland, what it means to be Scottish in relation to its landscape, and how the history of that landscape informs the views of nationalism over time. There is a melancholy tone to the book as Ascherson threads stories from his own life, family, and community through the story of the nation and its rocks and buildings. It's a book to be dipped into, really. A long ascent over a rough mountain track, with wonderful views to be savoured, cherished, and remembered.
The Gray, on the other hand, is just a long blog on getting old, smoking, no longer drinking, and struggling to write. Through this there is also the thread of family and early life remembered. Given the deaths and the illnesses surrounding Gray the tone is anything but melancholic. More stridently grumpy, an assertion of values that should still be cherished but which seem to be ignored and demeaned. A book of laughing out loud and wry smiles.
Needless to say, the stuff I had packed to read didn't leave the bag all week - or since. I have been switching between the two books, so different in almost every way. Except that neither is fiction, of course. The Ascherson is a meditation on the physical presence of Scotland, what it means to be Scottish in relation to its landscape, and how the history of that landscape informs the views of nationalism over time. There is a melancholy tone to the book as Ascherson threads stories from his own life, family, and community through the story of the nation and its rocks and buildings. It's a book to be dipped into, really. A long ascent over a rough mountain track, with wonderful views to be savoured, cherished, and remembered.
The Gray, on the other hand, is just a long blog on getting old, smoking, no longer drinking, and struggling to write. Through this there is also the thread of family and early life remembered. Given the deaths and the illnesses surrounding Gray the tone is anything but melancholic. More stridently grumpy, an assertion of values that should still be cherished but which seem to be ignored and demeaned. A book of laughing out loud and wry smiles.
