#reading_life

“Human beings depend on trees quite as much as on rivers and the sea. Our intimate relationship with trees is physical as well as cultural and spiritual: literally an exchange of carbon dioxide for oxygen. Once inside a wood, you walk on something very like the seabed, looking up at the canopy of leaves as if it were the surface of the water, filtering the descending shafts of sunlight and dappling everything….A tree itself is a river of sap: through roots that wave about underwater like sea anemones, the willow pollard at one end of the moat where I swim in Suffolk draws gallons of water into the leaf-tips of its topmost branches every day; released as vapour into the summer air, this water then rises invisibly to join the clouds, and the falling raindrops ripple out into every tree ring.” #RogerDeakin

Trees are the theme of the season, and I’m excited on this golden afternoon to finally step into a book that’s been standing so long on my shelf that it’s put down roots.

The introduction and the first chapter immediately sent me down the rabbit hole: “To enter a wood is to pass into a different world in which we ourselves are transformed….It is where you travel to find yourself, often, paradoxically, by getting lost.” (Roger Deakin, Wildwood, p. x).

Sept 16, 2023

106 books in my shelf, 39 fully read, most others partially so. I spent a good hour today reorganizing this bookshelf and making room for all the books I’ve accumulated that didn’t have a home. I obtain them much faster than I’m able to read them.

I love picking up all of the books, skimming through the ones I’ve read, seeing my scribbled notes, reliving the excitement of the words and the ideas. The books that I haven’t read yet are exciting for the potential they hold; what wisdom, new perspective, new idea am I going to come across?

Coming to my bookshelf is like going to a party of friends and strangers. The comfort, familiarity, and shared experiences with old friends mixes deliciously with the novelty and delight of meeting new ones.

December 27, 2019

I’ve been making my way, a few pages at a time, through this little book that I picked up in a bookstore in Scotland, in August 2018. I’ve wanted to read it for some time; it’s a classic in American literature. And I’m into it! It’s all part and parcel of this world of Transcendental philosophy and poetry that I’ve stepped into, and seem about to stay in for a while to come. I’m even planning a trip to the Boston, Concord, Cape Cod area, where this fascinating group of people did their thinking and writing.

I’ll update this page as I go through the book. But it’s a bit of a slog. The first chapter is a monster: 80 pages long, and an essay about his thoughts on civilization (spoiler alert: he doesn’t think much of it), which is what set him up to decide to build a cabin at Walden Pond and live in solitude for 2 years and 2 months. I’m very, very curious about whether his solution to the detriments of American society in the early 1800s - to reject it altogether - pans out for him as expected, or what he learns from the experience. I still remember what one of my grad school professors told us during our orientation session (she was advising us to not get romantically involved with professors): “The fantasy is always better than the reality.” And that’s what I should have tattooed on my arm, because it’s the best piece of advice I’ve ever been given.

It’s a couple of months on, at least, and I’m still progressing through this book, sometimes as slowly as a few pages a week. I turned the 100th page this morning. In my earlier days, I’d have devoured this book in an evening. The subject matter is fascinating, the writing is easily accessible, and the tone is informative without broaching moralism.

A few years ago I decided to stop carrying a purse. Once I got through the years of carrying cumbersome diaper bags with me, I was bag-fatigued. I longed for the freedom to simply step out a door when the impulse hit me, and cut through crowds like a Ginsu knife through a ripe tomato. Did I need to go for milk? Sure. I could be out the door in the thirty seconds it took to tie my shoes, and home again in fifteen minutes from the time the idea entered my head. Freedom, man.

Bags were baggage, so I stopped carrying them. The secondary effect was that I stopped carrying books with me. I’d had a book on my person my entire life, it feels like. I could read anywhere, and usually was. I didn’t know how to get to my grandparents’ house when I was 15, because I’d always been reading in the car on the drive to Dorchester. My brother teased me mercilessly when he discovered this, because, brothers.

With the unintended removal of my paper appendage, it’s surprising I didn’t feel the papercut. It coincided with the arrival of my first smartphone, and the convenience of pocket-sized, transient, disposable information at my fingertips. Books became reserved for bed time reading, when I was usually too tired to read. My urge to intake mental information started to become met with the fast food smartphone version of reading. The crack-like addiction to instant gratification; a blood sugar rush without nutrition. Tell me something interesting in 140 characters or less, because otherwise it’s TLDR. Give me pictures, because that’s even easier to digest in one byte. No long-term time commitment required to get that exciting hit of new information.