My library seems to be filling up with large and beautiful coffee table books at the moment (I have a strong suspicion that other libraries are sneaking them in here at night, when we aren’t looking). They ARE beautiful, with their giant pages, shiny covers, and gorgeous multi-page spreads of breathtaking photographs of exotic places. But they don’t make my heart beat faster.
Instead, and being the contrary kind of girl that I am, I am finding myself drawn to the other end of the spectrum. Beside my bed is a slim volume of short stories by A.S. Byatt; in my bag is a copy of Susan Hill’s The Small Hand; I recently finished re-reading Dan Rhodes’ Gold and Little Hands Clapping, and earlier in the year read and loved Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending. I keep putting Alan Bennett’s Smut and The Uncommon Reader on the Staff Picks shelf, and I have just picked up The Library Book from the holds shelf.
I don’t know what it is about my current state of mind that is making me drawn to these wee jewels – at under 200 pages each, they certainly don’t keep me reading for very long, and I have to make sure I have at least two or three around all the time in case I finish one before my lunch break is over, but I can’t seem to go past them. Subject matter isn’t important, and neither is a fact-or-fiction differentiation. They DO have to be hard-backed copies to catch my eye, but apart from that it seems I am not fussy at all. I can quite happily dismiss the great solid tomes that everyone is carting around right now, but show me a tiny story and I have to have it.
Help me out here, folks. Point out the common thread, so I can make sense of my addiction, and then feed it by suggesting more tiny titles …
4 October 2012 at 10:16 am
I want to read so many of these books, the short story collection sounds especially great. : )
4 October 2012 at 11:19 am
It IS great, Cassie! AS Byatt is a brilliant writer, and one of my favourites. I was just looking at the library record in our catalogue, and the tags for this book are: children, depressing, monsters. Which first made me laugh, and then made me feel a bit sad – the stories ARE about children, DO feature monsters, sort of, and COULD leave you feeling a bit depressed, but I think a better tag would have been ‘melancholy’. Try them and let me know what you think!
4 October 2012 at 1:15 pm
I love the Montana Essay Series , especial Margaret Mahy’s Notes of a bag lady and David Burton’s Biography of a local palate
11 October 2012 at 9:03 pm
I just read a great wee volume of short stories by a Christchurch local, Frankie McMillan. The book is, “The Bag Lady’s Picnic and Other Stories”. The library has one copy! Her short stories have a wide range of topics, characters and McMillian has an incredible command of language. A must read wee book!