Friday 30 January 2009

Belfast



Books read, notes made. The sun is out but it's cold. In twenty minutes or so I'll walk down to the station then get the Stansted Express at Cambridge. Still more to read. Of the reading of books there is no end, and that is because as Ecclesiastes [12:12] tells us: Of the making many books there is no end.

So someone has to read them. Every book is read by someone, some time. Go, enjoy. Go, dig. Maybe something from Belfast. Maybe not.



2 comments:

Gwil W said...

"someone has to read them" and so I guess I'm now a "someone". I always wanted (never) to be a "someone". But is being a "someone" like being a "somebody"? Is one a "somebody" for 15 minutes and a "someone" for longer? The trouble with being a "someone" as "somebody" once told me is that you become public property. And that is what puts me off being a "someone" or a "somebody". George, I admire your courage, for your are not only a "somebody" but also a "someone". And a "someone" worth reading if I may make so bold. And so to the books. As it happens I'm just back from the library with (delves in rucksack):

Norman Mailer - The Castle in the Forest,
Kurt Vonnegut - Hocus Pocus
The Vintage Book of Indian Writing - editors Rushdie and West
Jean-Paul Sartre - Nausea
Mina Loy - The Lost Lunar Baedeker
Thomas Bernhard - In Hora Mortis / Under the Iron of the Moon.

George, I bear my reader soul to you. I have nothing "from Belfast".

Gwil W said...

I don't know if it's true but I just read in Augustin (a newspaper sold by the homeless) that Jean-Paul Sartre (above booklist) was on the Vatican's banned list - 'a person dangerous to read' I think was the official designation. It was a strangely thrilling to read that, sitting as I was, in 'Cafe´ Museum', one of Trotsky's old watering holes, with a Sartre book in my pocket for the tram journey.