This is the time of year when book bloggers and magazines and newspapers are touting their Best Of lists. I, however, am going to take a different slant on my reading for the year 2014.
Here you have Belle's Book Guide, a look at a few books that especially entertained and guided me through the year.
To begin with, for a total education I could have just read and re-read two books: Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel which covers everything from literature to history to art, and, yes, a few travel destinations along the way, and The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel which offers shelves full of architecture, histories of private and public libraries and their patrons, lost books, burned books, and a community of international authors.
Here are other BOOKS that made up my reading list this year and what they brought to my life:
Beauty: The Southerner's Handbook celebrates the beauty of what makes Southerners Southern and gave me insights into my own below-the-Mason-Dixon line heritage. These were well-written essays collected by the editors of Garden and Gun magazine on everything from sweet tea and barbecue to the Great Southern Novel and the Art of Wearing Pearls.
Anytime I read one of Peter Mayle's novels set in France - this year it was Chasing Cezanne - I know I am in for a sensory extravaganza. He not only paints for me the landscape and architecture of the region but also the glories of food and drink and the pleasures of the table. Delicious.
Observation: Reading books such as Delight by J.B. Priestly and A Book of One's Own: People and Their Diaries by Thomas Mallon remind me to slow down and take a good look at everyday pleasures and to be mindful of recording them in my own journal. Also, dipping into the wacky worlds of Dave Barry (You Can Date When You're Forty) and Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods) and reading their close observations and experiments with life keep me from taking things too seriously.
In Still Writing by Dani Shapiro, I observed a writer at work and also felt as if I had spent time with and gotten to know a new friend. Her look at her own writing practice with its perils and pleasures is a must-read for anyone looking to jump start her creative life.
Obfuscation: Of the over one hundred books I read this year more than 40 of them were mysteries/suspense/thriller novels. I do love a puzzle. These were books ranging from the old school Agatha Christie's The Body in the Library to the new school world of Tim Hallinan's witty burglar Junior Bender. It takes a clever author to hide clues in plain sight and yet keep me guessing.
Kindness: Unlike the murder and mayhem found in the books above, kindness and good spirits abound in The All-Girls' Filling Station Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg; the ever delightful 84,
Charing Cross Road and The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff; and, my favorite of the year, The Pink Motel by Carol Ryrie Brink. In each of these books the kindnesses of strangers and the affection of the characters for each other (including dogs and blue jays) encourage one to just Be Kind.
Simplicity, Solitude, Silence: There are a dearth of books telling me how to pack more into and organize every nanosecond of my days. I, however, prefer to live a life with broad margins. I aim to leave time between activities - whether chores and errands or the more contemplative ones of painting and writing. Here are the books that inspired me this past year: Shelter for the Spirit by Victoria Moran; two by Elaine St. James, Simplify Your Life and Living the Simple Life; and the first two 'shells' (her chapters on solitude and simplicity) in Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea.
For the complete list (to date) of my shelf full of books for 2014, browse here.
Now, what books guided you through the year?
The small cabinet over my refrigerator is full to the brim with those wonderful black-and-white school composition notebooks. They are the journals that I have been writing in for years. Interspersed with that lot are other spiral bound notebooks, a few 'pretty' journals, and even some loose-leaf pages kept from an ill-fated attempt to keep a diary using a three-ring binder.
I also have a drawer that holds journals that were started for a particular reason and abandoned - perhaps kept on a short trip or as the beginnings of a commonplace book.
All this leads me to Thomas Mallon's A Book of One's Own: People and Their Diaries. I first read it soon after its publication date in 1983. It is a book that I have been wanting to reread and finally got around to doing just that last month.
I had been sporadically keeping a journal for years before I first read this book - I still have two of the little diaries with locks from high school - but Mr. Mallon introduced me to people who were like-minded in wanting to keep a record of their days.
Here were writers, artists, preachers, politicians, crooks and even an assassin who felt compelled to make note of their thoughts, dreams, desires, and events happening not only in their private lives but in the world around them.
So we have samples from the famous diaries of Samuel Pepys, Virginia Woolf, Degas, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Thoreau. There are also entries from a whole raft of everyday people. Mr. Mallon has gathered all these keepers of the word into sections: Chroniclers, Travelers, Pilgrims, Creators, Apologists, Confessors, and Prisoners.
This is not a series of entries one after the other. Mr. Mallon entertains the reader with his own witty and insightful comments and connections on the entries and their compilers. This book helped me to expand my own journals into more than just whining about whatever particular inconvenience life was handing out at the moment. I found reading this book to be a fascinating look into the minds and lives of so many. Fascinating, even more so now, rereading it some decades later and after many hundreds of journal entries of my own.
My own journal keeping has developed, or maybe I should say declined, in the past few years to more of a nightly list begun as a way to remind me that I actually do accomplish some things each day. But I was inspired by one of the diarists in Mallon's book, Toni Bentley, a corps member of the New York City Ballet who kept a journal for one Winter Season begun on November 21, 1980 and finished on February 15, 1981. She used it to assess her career in dance and her commitment to her art.
So I hunted up this attractive journal that I had tucked away for a special occasion...
...and began keeping what I am calling A Winter Journal on November 1, 2014.
Of a late afternoon, I sit at my desk overlooking my small front yard and ponder and muse and write about whatever strikes my fancy. It may be a page describing the items on my desk, two pages bemoaning my fate at the mechanical problems my Jeep is experiencing (and have thankfully been repaired), or it may just be a list of cities I still want to visit.
I might also include observations on the weather, the light, the leaves piling up, or the red cardinal at rest on the rim of the French blue birdbath.
I write with a comfortable Lamay fountain pen that I purchased on a trip to Savannah a couple of years ago. (Fountain pens are my one weakness!) The pages are smooth and lined and the book has a nice heft to it so I know I mean business. I bought this one and a red one like it ages ago. I only paid $7 for each one. Now I wish I had bought a few more.
I realize this post has turned out to be more about me than A Book of One's Own, but I highly recommend Mr. Mallon's look at diaries and the people who keep them. It just might inspire you to pick up a notebook and begin to write.
It has been a busy week that has left no room for extended reading time. I haven't even kept up with my 'daily' books. So, I was pleased to finally make a trip to the library this afternoon to pick up a book on hold.
Happily, I now have a copy of Moranthology by Caitlin Moran, a collection of her columns from the Times of London. Back in the day, before the newspaper put up its paywall, I used to read her funny essays on line for free. Thanks to a stellar review by Simon at Stuck-in-a-Book (here), I was reminded of Ms. Moran and immediately put my name in the pot at the library.
Since I was going to be there, I checked over my TBR list and added these two to my stash:
Counting My Chickens... and Other Home Thoughts (2001) by The Duchess of Devonshire. Deborah, or Debo, is the youngest of the Mitford siblings - Nancy, Pamela, Tom, Diana, Unity, and Jessica. (What a family.) I have read this before and it is most entertaining. Just three sections: Diaries, Chatsworth, and Books and Company. Bonus: There is a lovely photo of Chatsworth on the back cover to stare at if my eyes grow weary of words.
In Fact: Essays on Writers and Writing (2001) by Thomas Mallon. Mr. Mallon is a novelist and essayist and my first introduction to him came through A Book of One's Own: People and Their Diaries (1995). In Fact is a collection of essays written for his column in GQ and for other publications. With sections on Working Writers, Off the Shelf, and On the Fringe, it looks to be quite amusing.
Now, where shall I start?
