Holiday reading
John Michell
This blog is going on holiday for a week to enjoy fresh sea breezes, long walks and real beers in real pubs. Pubs! The highest proof of the existence of God!
I shall of course be packing some holiday reading, none of it death related though, as we know, Reaper G does have an importunate way of pooping most everything.
I shall also be asking Amazon to send me two books and, were I you (I know, I know, the record shows clearly that I am not), I’d be seriously considering doing the same.
What are they?
First up, Thomas Lynch’s latest. Apparitions and Late Fiction. Read a review here and another here. Now buy it.
Second up: How the World is Made by John Michell. This is the work he was desperate to finish before the cancer did for him last year. Beautiful man, beautiful mind. Buy, buy, buy!
Bye. See you all next Monday.
Labels: Books
posted by Charles Cowling at
18:57
6 Comments:
Speaking of Amazon, Charles; I note that the Good Funeral Guide, when it finally comes out ("You'd be late for your own funeral" springs to mind!! not your fault, dear fellow, I know...) will be available from, yes, Amazon.
Call me old-fashioned, but half the pleasure of a good book, for me, is the visceral experience of buying it... finding it's not in stock and ordering it, getting a call ten days later from the lady at the counter to say your order has arrived, going and leafing through it in the bookshop, smelling the freshly printed pages, browsing the headings and a few paragraphs, feeling the weight and size of it in my hands, re-checking the price tag, reading the introduction, deciding yes, yes, I really DO want to buy it out of the housekeeping money, and taking it over to the assistant wtih folding stuff in hand (no thanks, I don't need a bag, come on come on) and feeling impatient to get the rest of the shopping out of the way so I can get home and read it with a nice cup of freshly-brewed coffee and a French cigarette.
The thought of beaming my credit card details to a lump of metal orbiting the planet, and HOPING the postie will get the message by some mysterious technology I don't understand and come and leave a note telling me I wasn't in when he called, and having to find the time to get to the dreary Roayal Mail or PrestaPost or SpeedyLivery depot, well it all kinda spoils the fun of it, so... CAN I ORDER IT FROM A BOOKSHOP*?
(*an archaic building full of bound paper volumes staffed by snooty bookworms)
x Jonathan
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jonathan, to you and all other quaint purchasers of non-virtual books I can offer the assurance that it will be available in all good bookshops and, I hope, all bad ones, too, even all cornershops, filling stations, bookies, costermongers, fishwives and houses of ill-repute.
It's the way of the world, old boy. Amazon gobbles up quantities and sells at a huge mark-up for itself and a tempting discount to the buyer. It's a rum business, publishing. First Amazon takes a chunk, then the publisher a slice, then the agent a sliver and finally the writer a crumb. I'll make more if you buy it from an evolutionarily challenged human, so please do!
On the lookout for a goblin carving advice about funerals into the pavement as we speak. Well, virtually speak.
I can't match Jonathan's eloquance but I do love the feel of a book in my hands.
I wish you a salt-caked absence, and a terrific read of these extraordinary books, Charles.
PS
I was struck by how much more of a resemblance you bore to John Michell than to Thomas Lynch.
XX
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