Books

With every exploding detail of the new exhibition, the temptation for books in the evening has grown. Door-stoppers, the most impractical books for harried lives, are piling up around my bed. A fat new biography of an old president, a re-evaluation of the Middle Ages, a complete volume of poetry by someone inclined to epics, a 19th century magnum opus novel, a volume of South American noir that could also be used as a bludgeon in self-defense, and so on. Not that I'm reading them all, but their fat, slow, stodgy selves presuppose the beach. They presuppose uninterrupted stretches of time. This is I think the source of my current temptation. I am not reading but pretending. It is fantasy, like storing books under the covers as a kid with the illusion that once under I would be in my own private woodland den (from Brambly Hedge) lined with honey pots (from Pooh). I never read under the covers. But imagination benefits from a few props. Hence my buying another volume of history today and a testy personal memoir. The stack grows.