September makes me look towards Halloween, dark crisp quiet nights & cozying down in bed early with a good book. It's strange how you can have a habit all your life, and then just fall out of it.
I had a bereavement in the family, it was my grandfather, straight after I finished a busy couple of years retraining, in the midst of relocating with a fairly new partner who came from Scotland to be with me. I barely made it home those two years. I couldn't afford to. And he didn't like fuss. My grandfather taught me how to read when I was 3, and if he was being extra silly he would read an entire book to me backwards, from finish to start in a gibberish language without faltering. He was perfect at it!
My grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimers shortly after he passed, she remembered who I was but was otherwise a ghost haunting herself. I am grateful she didn't have to mourn my Grandfathers passing but it was a lonely time. These were my defacto parents, they held the only
familial memories I had. A small family, with few larger ties. If I wanted to ask someone what happened, or
share a family story, I had no reference, no one to confirm it with. It
was very unsettling. I felt untethered, adrift. I felt all that I was at
the present time, was what I had carved out for myself since I left home. I felt I couldn't rely
on memories, or get sentimental.It is a lot to take for someone in their twenties and I suddenly had more in common with my friends parents than my friends themselves.
I came across one particular book I loved him to read to me when I was clearing out his and my grandmothers house and it made me so sad to find it. I stood at a charity shop collection bin, dithering on whether or not to keep it, but the sad memories won out and I slipped it in with no small reget, then I couldn't look at a book afterwards. I couldn't settle to read, I would get into a panic like a cornered wild creature. Books have memories and personalities, they can define a time in your life or a mood and the woman who purchased these book and her trust in an all pervasive good in the universe was gone. I wanted them gone too.
I was a different person. Everything felt trite, childish, 2 dimensional. Authors I would have took comfort in before felt whiny, privileged and annoying. I started thinking how in the creative arts; most of the works come from people with a place of privilege to start with. I only wanted to read from people who had had actual hardship in their life, not fucking lamenting a break up with a grade A narcissist, compose epic replies to imaginary slights or give an existential take on their shallow, event free existence.
All my other books at the house, they went to the charity shop too. My paperback collection, with the "good" authors all firmly in place, took a huge battering. I suddenly didn't care to have my taste defined by my bookshelves. It didn't matter. All I kept were either signed, first editions or books older than the nineteenth century like this one I used for an mua photoshoot of mine-
The last week I've been feeling autumn creep into the air and wanting to take out a book again, that isn't an Art reference manual or a non fiction. I have a small, newly purchased pile I shall be working my way through. I also have an indestructible five year old pink sony book reader that has lived in all of my handbags with around a hundred novels I planned on reading.
I am starting with a new Susanna Kearsley. A few christmases ago in Scotland, I wanted a novel to read whilst looking out onto the basin, with an inky black sky over the frosty mud flats, the damp salt tang of the sea and the lights of the town twinkling off in the distance. It had to be about a local castle, have frilly dresses, lots of tree's and be set in winter near the sea. I was asking a lot. My partner helped with a quick google search and I cracked this girl open and thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish. It was actually the last carefree reading experience I had. Before. If you enjoy escapism, and who doesn't? then I highly recommend it.
Wish me Luck.
