One of the things I notice about reading, or perhaps it is
just the books I read and particularly enjoy, is how one book opens connections
to another book or another something or other that sends my mind wandering in a
direction I wasn’t expecting. And so I have to explore it, or want to explore
it, until I read the next book which sets my mind wandering in another,
completely different direction and I’m so full of things I want to know and
explore that I simply don’t know where to start and I’m left wondering how,
with all the information and experiences and ideas there are in the world,
anyone has time to ever get to know anything and where does it stop and instead
I’ll go and watch an episode of Stargate SG1 or a panel show or a Studio Ghibli
movie and try to forget about it all.
Perhaps that is why people watch TV programmes like
Coronation Street and Neighbours. In the
infinity of ideas and knowledge and stories one is as good as another.
I have noticed this particularly because it has happened a
lot to me lately. I have spent a lot of time following threads and accumulating
a list of desires and interests. Right now I am re-reading The Last Samurai by
Helen DeWitt, which is an amazing book, and which I remember from my first read
made me want to watch The Seven Samurai (which I did, followed by the car crash
that is The Magnificent Seven (comparably) ), learn Greek (which I didn’t),
learn Japanese (which I have attempted many times and largely failed) and which
cemented in my head forever more the phrases ‘a good samurai will parry the blow’ and ‘if we were using real swords, I'd have killed you’ which are
from The Seven Samurai which is, in fact, an excellent film and which spiralled
me into a relationship with Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune (who is peerless in The Hidden Fortress, which inspired Star Wars
if you can believe it) and Takashi Shimura (known for Godzilla and the
masterpiece Ikiru which everyone
should watch). Right now I am feeling
that I absolutely must watch Sanshiro Sugata, which is available in a box set of
Kurosawa movies meaning I will have even
more Kurosawa movies, as though such a thing were possible. Sigh.
Then thinking back, I begin to acknowledge all the other
crazy things I have absolutely had to do
after reading a book. Like how after reading Olivia Laing’s To The River I
absolutely had to start walking again (which I have done and which I have
enjoyed greatly and consequently have thought, quite seriously, about walking
The Pennine Way solo and writing a book about it only to find that Simon
Armitage has pretty much done that already. Hadrian’s Wall, perhaps?) as well
as dig, heavily, into the life and works of Virginia Woolf. And reading
Virginia Woolf’s diaries has made me highly curious about the life of Vita
Sackville-West and consequently I’m now reading the letters of Violet Trefusis
to Vita Sackville-West and I have logged, on my wishlist, Vita Sackville-West’s
book Challenge which is a love story about her relationship with Violet. Then I
find there are letters from Vita to Virginia Woolf and I absolutely must read
those. You get the picture. And I recall having read A Tale for the Time Being
and absolutely certainly having to read
the Shōbōgenzō (which I have started and not got very far with) and Proust (I
endured book 1. No more).
I begin to realise how much influence books have over my
life. In fact when I think about it, it is not just my own life that my reading
influences but also the life of my family. My husband has been (and will be)
subjected to many Kurosawa movies, some of which he wanted to watch and others
not so much. And my whole family has been indoctrinated into a love of Japan,
primarily because of my reading habits (and viewing...which may have spun from
the reading thing). I go for walks with my daughter, which I can directly
attribute to my current interest in nature/travel writing (though, to be fair,
it did remind me how much I have
always enjoyed being in amongst nature) and which will probably worsen when I
get around to reading Rebecca Solnit’s book Wanderlust
which is sitting on my shelf right now in prime reading position.
All this made me wonder if it would be possible to trace all
your reading habits (or mine, perhaps) back to one book. That one critical book
which tipped off the next book, which pointed to the next book, which indicated
the next three and so on and so forth until before you know it you’re so buried
in books you want to read that really the only thing to do is close the library
door and go switch on Neighbours.
I am not so sure this isn’t a sign of madness. I look at my
library shelves and wonder, if amongst the titles, the varied and seemingly
unconnected mass of them, there is a pulsing link, that a cleverer person than
me could look at those books and read my neural map there, figure out who I am
and every notable experience in my history. Do my books read me? It is
disconcerting to think that someone could deduce a key aspect of my character
merely from the positioning of A
Vindication on the Rights of Women next to Thus Spake Zarathustra, my tattered copy of The Penguin Book of Modern Verse compared to the sharp-edged Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, my neat
collection of grey-backed Persephones.
I wonder how unique this kind of reading journey is. Is that
how everyone experiences it? That one book leads to the curiosity for another.
If I hadn’t read Angela Carter as an impressionable teenager, would I be a
feminist? If I hadn’t read Cloud Atlas, would I have ever discovered The Bridge
of San Luis Rey? Writers lead to writers and stories to stories and suddenly
the world unfolds as one, great, narrative including the story of us and the
story of stones, the story of dinosaurs, the story of art, the story of war and
conflict, the story of country, the story of love and peace, the story of the
flowers in the field, the story of bones, the story of air, the story of what
is fixed and what is broken, the story of time, my story and yours.
I want to read them all; I know that is not possible. So I guess I will continue to plough ahead, following the map the books give me, wherever that leads.
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