I am currently taking an antibiotic, of which a common side effect is insomnia, which means I am awake for several hours in the middle of the night. And I have to say that episodes of Grace and Frankie - which I have already seen twice - are a wonderful comfort. I have also rewatched a couple of episodes of As Time Goes By. They offer similar succour.
Along similar lines, the topic for our next Bakewell Quaker newsletter is “Which three books or authors do you return to and why?” which Chrissie Poulson (also a member of Bakewell Meeting) suggested. She has sent her contribution to me, as the editor, but also put it on her blog to which there is a link at the side of my blog. So I thought I’d follow suit and share my contribution with you.
It was very very hard choosing just three, but here are my choices of books/authors in no particular order :
Leaving Home by Garrison Keillor - because it’s a comfort. The book is insightful and amusing, and it’s about ordinary people. I prefer reading about everyday life and everyday people to reading about ‘important’ people.
The novels of Anne Tyler - because she also writes so well about ordinary people with ordinary lives. Her books are entertaining, hold valuable insights into human nature and human dilemmas, and they are well written in a style I like. I don’t read books that have a writing style I don’t like, no matter how worthy or highly recommended they are. For example I have stopped reading Barbara Kingsolver’s books because although she has a nice style, she uses two pages to express something when two sentences would do, and it drives me nuts. Incidentally, I just listened to one of her earlier books on BBC Radio Sounds, and I enjoyed it, because it was abridged. The title is Holding the line: women in the great Arizona mine strike.
My third choice is a set of three poetry anthologies published by Bloodaxe: Staying Alive, Being Alive, and Being Human - because they offer such a huge and fantastic collection of contemporary poetry. ( I rarely like poetry written before the 20th century, and yes that does include Shakespeare, so sue me.) The poems in these anthologies deal with every aspect of life - birth, death, growing up, family, love life, war and peace, war and survival, living in hope, loss, the daily round, and much much more. These anthologies offer me food for thought, consolation, encouragement, inspiration, explanations, and sometimes humour. Here are two poets’ words on poetry which express how I feel:
Dana Gioa: “Poetry is the art of using words charged with their utmost meaning.”
R.S.Thomas: “Poetry is that which arrives at the intellect by way of the heart.”
Here are three poems I found in one or other of these anthologies:
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