Reading is a young person's game

I worked it out recently, if I live to be 75, and I read one book a week until then, then I only have about 1,900 books left (John, if you still read this blog, you might want to check my math on this again!! :)).

So I am trying to up it to three books a fortnight at the moment.

Life just keeps getting in the way.

I used to read on the bus.

Now I have Kitty for company on the bus in the morning, as she is back in the city and going to Citadel High now. Although we are both usually so groggy we don't talk much, just listen to the conversations on the bus and roll our eyes at each other.

Mostly we listen to the teenagers talk about music.

What happens is, two teenagers get on the bus, share an iPod, crank it right up so everyone on the bus can hear it and then discuss the music loudly over the music.

It drives all the oldarses on the bus CRAAAAAZZZZZYYYY.

So in true Nova Scotia fashion, they all just sit there and glare at them.

The other day a particularly bad couple were discussing how they'd replicate the sound, which sounded a bit like Sleator-Kinney but I can't be sure.

The woman sitting in front of me nearly broke her neck swivelling to GLARE.

But of course it wasn't having any effect, as teenagers don't actually register any humans over the age of twenty five.

So, trying to be helpful, I turned round and mouthed 'can you turn the music down' at the guy.

He poked the girl with the iPod.

"WHAT?"

"I JUST GOT YELLED AT FOR HAVING THE MUSIC TOO LOUD"

"I did not yell at you", I said, "I asked you nicely!"

So they turned it up of course.

And everyone on the bus spent the rest of the journey GLARING at me.

Sigh.

Anyways, back to reading..

I just finished Ismail Kadare's The Successor. Kadare is a Man Booker International winner and Albania's greatest living author, apparently.

It was a grim book. A carefully worded atmospheric tale of the death of Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu, who was Hoxha's successor, and who 'killed himself' in mysterious circumstances in the later years of Hoxha's reign. I couldn't put it down, it was so circular and layered that at the end you are completely confused about what was going on, in a way that was redolent of living during those times I imagine.

I am definitely going to read more of Kadare.

Before that I read Arturo Perez Reverte's second novel in the Captain Alatriste series, Purity of Blood. Also good in terms of its description of the dying days of the Spanish Empire, but a bit stilted and not Reverte's usual high standard.

I have started going to Chapters because I realised that they have a great sale bin. It's chock full of European and Asian literary fiction, discounted down to as low as $1 a book, because nobody knows who the writers are.

I have quite the collection now, although I have taken to selling my books on these days.

I have enough stuff.

And this way, I can justify three books a fortnight to myself.

The guy in the United Bookstore, to whom I sell my books, enjoys it when I come in I hope. I know I enjoy my trips in. I review each book for him, and we have a right old natter about all things literary - plus he knows some people in the CanLit industry so he always has a little snippet of gossip for me.

It's gratifying to buy a top class European novel for $1, read it, scrape the discount sticker off it, and sell it to him for one third the cover price. Then wait to see how long it is before someone else buys it.

Currently, I'm finally reading The Master. I tend to avoid Colm Toibin until he turns up in the bargain bin: I don't know why, because I always enjoy his books. But I got a hardback 1st American edition for six bucks that I shall probably keep - I am trying to hold onto some of the good ones for the summer visitors to browse.

I am a big Henry James fan, and always wondered how he got his prose so narrow yet evocative, so it is very interesting to read Toibin's theories in this fictionalised biography. Plus it's a ripping good yarn, albeit in a very Jamesian style.

It is interesting that Toibin has set himself up as the Irish James by writing about James. No doubt he was helped by David Lodge trying to do the same thing and failing (according to accepted wisdom, I haven't read his). Lodge is a wonderful writer, but he's more Trollope than James. So that makes Toibin's proposition more biddable.

I have just finished a Colin Thubron I didn't even know existed (oh, the excitement, I was all a-tremble in Schooner Books when I found it). Mirror to Damascus is a history of the city, a homage to its place in history, and a travelogue of the year Thubron spent there researching the book.

It is early Thubron, so it has some of the enthusiasm for place that he has lost a little as he ages. Also, the research he did then must have sent him east across the Silk Road, as I came across a lot of the stuff on little known muslim sects and warrior tribes that come up in his later books. In this book he is just learning about them. In later books, such as Shadow of the Silk Road, he visits their homelands. In Damascus, he visits their imprint on the city.

I have to stop typing now and go pick up kitty's friends so they can hang out in our house this evening....

Life gets in the way...

Hopefully, the presence of friends will mean uninterrupted blogging time, so I will be back presently.

Actually, I have just been told that I have to wait until the friends have sorted out their arrangements.

Like a good chauffeur.

Sigh.

But it's so nice to have a second chance to travel a bit of the way with her that I am prepared to put up with some of the stereotypical behaviour that's back in the house. Having said that, we're all a year older and wiser and it's the summer so the behaviour is not so annoying.

I have made the following promises to myself:

This time I will not see the mess. If I see the mess, then I will just have to clean it up.

This time I will be more patient. With myself, with everyone else, and with the moment.

This time I will not make the rules, that's her father's job, and he knows that girl's heart better than I do.

This time I will not protect my heart from possible unmendable fractures by hiding it behind headless chickenness.