Location, Location, Location

Do you read on the move? I never leave the house without a book. I know, I know, my previous post does suggest that I never leave the house full stop, but that's not true. It's only a Christmas spell of cabin fever. I thought it would be interesting to make a note of the most memorable places where I read my last book - Great House, Nicole Krauss (psst, amazing by the way).


1. Purchase Point: Dublin Airport
2. First page opened: On the plane, pre-take-off
3. Plane ride Dublin to London
4. Train ride London Gatwick to London Victoria
5. Tube ride London Victoria to Aldgate East
6. In bed with tea & pb on toast
7. Train ride two days later
8. At my parents house on the big couch with a satsuma mountain
9. In bed
10. In the bath
11. In bed
12. On the couch
13. In the bath
14. On (but not in) bed


As you can see the repetition between points 8-14 indicate the recent house incubation period. Where is your best spot for book reading? I couldn't go on a plane ride without a book, I'm a bit of a nervous flier. Books keep my mind off engines, wings and speeding down runways, urgh.

Reading

is a private, not a collective activity. The writer speaks only to individuals, sitting by themselves in a state of normal sobriety.

Aldous Huxley. Brave New World Revisited (1958)

He remembered

the books of poetry upon his shelves at home. He had bought them in his bachelor days and many an evening, as he sat in the little room of the hall, he had been tempted to take one down from the bookshelf and read out something to his wife. But shyness always held him back; and so the books had remained on their shelves.

“A Little Cloud”. Dubliners. James Joyce.

I wanted to tell the book thief many things,

about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.

Markus Zusak. The Book Thief.