I used to read voraciously, devouring at least a book a week. However, in recent years, particularly since I started posting every day nearly four years ago, I get into the rhythm of reading books far less often.
In this, I have had a tendency to judge myself for not taking time to read whole books, at least until last year when, inspired by Nick Parker and his brilliant short book “On Reading”, I started to think differently about reading and books. One example from Nick was “the unit of reading is a chapter“, and another idea I chose was “slow reading”, where I would take a book I am enjoying and choose to read it very, very slowly at no more than four or five pages at a time.
It seems things are changing now, and I have not one but four books ready to read, and they all came to me really quickly.
First, in the photo in the blog about Nick’s book (linked to above), there is a picture of me in my hammock in Cayman years ago reading a book by Ian Rankin. I recently finished reading a more recent Ian Rankin hardback, “In a House of Lies“, taking nearly a year to “slow read” it, and you will note that one of the four books above is the latest by Ian Rankin, a signed copy of which I just won in a charity raffle by the “Untidy Bookshelf“. I was amazed, as I never win anything like that.
Next, I attended an online event this week with the author Elif Shafak. She is a deeply thoughtful person and a brilliant novelist, bringing her lyrical and creative mind to both her writing and her passion as a human rights activist. The ticket choices included a copy of her new book, “The Island of Missing Trees”, so that became my next book.
After that, I saw Sarfraz Manzoor share on twitter that his book “They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other” is being published any day now, so I ordered that. Sarfraz wrote the book behind the wonderful movie “Blinded by the Light”, about how the music of Bruce Springsteen influenced a teen growing up in Luton. He and I occasionally bounce things around on Twitter and I like his style, plus the subject matter is one where I can always learn so much more.
Finally, I then saw that Jonathan Vaughters has published an autobiography of his life as a pro cyclist then team owner. I had the wonderful experience of bringing that team to the Cayman Islands in 2010 and, through that, learned a lot about the team, as well as having the opportunity to be with them at the end of the 2011 Tour de France in Paris, as well as visiting their base in Girona.
I look forward to reading all of those books, starting in about a week when I will be in quarantine on arrival in Cayman for five or so days.
I do know that pausing to read always “fills my cup”, so I am glad that, organically, the urge to read has come to me once again.
Thank you to all of these authors, as well as Nick Parker and the Untidy Bookshelf for inspiring me to pause to read.
In closing, this is my current “untidy bookshelf”. These clearly aren’t all the books I own, but they are the ones I unpacked onto my, well, my zoom background. No organisation, eclectic and random, and soon to be added to with these four new books.
