My magic white chair which holds an ongoing scrumptious pile of books
Contrary to popular belief, I have a very large bedroom. Filled with - what I call valuable treasures, what my dear mother calls clutter. The nerve! I'm always worried that I will go home, up the stairs, open the door and wham! It's tidy and empty. It's very tidy, believe me. Just not her version of tidy. If she had her way I'd be left with minimal furniture and no computer or bookshelf, if she's in a good mood she might leave the bed alone!
Next to my dressing table is a magic chair. Forget magic beans, you want this chair. It's white, rickety (is that a word? Should it be crikety? Someone should let me write the dictionary). Where was I - ah, my magic chair.
This magic chair is really vulnerable which is why it is never in use. When you sit on it you always get the impression that any minute now, really, any second now the legs will give away and scenes from your childhood movies will come alive. But it's a magic chair.
It can take the weight of about twenty books.
But not human weight.
I pile books, a handful I don't own (but not stolen), I want to read sometime soon on this chair. And I work my way through it. The problem is that this pile gets bigger and bigger every week. And still the chair does not give away. They must have a mutal understanding, the books and the chair. Sounds like a Chekhov short story doesn't it? 'The Books and the Chair'.
'You're staring to get too heavy for me.' The chair said one day to the books.'Blame it on Dickens' Plath moaned as she looked down from the top of the pile. Should she jump? It's not a bad way to go. Maybe the guy - what was his name? James something, Henry James - maybe he would catch her. Their paths crossed yesterday. They had a brief conversation about the weather. But when she'd got back to the top she got the impression - like she always did after a conversation with him, that he meant something entirely different. She wished the silly man would just say exactly what he meant.
Here's what the pile looks like on 20th January ('R' means I've read it before but I don't feel like I've 'finished' with them - ever get that feeling?) :
Vanity Fair by W. M. Thackeray (R)
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
The Time of the Angels by Iris Murdoch
The sea, The sea by Iris Murdoch (R)
The sea by John Banville
Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark
The Driver’s seat by Muriel Spark
Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
The Ambassadors by Henry James
Wings of a dove by Henry James (R)S
aturday by Ian McEwan
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Espedair Street by Iain Banks
The Bridge by Iain Banks
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
A passage to India by E.M. Forster
The world according to Garp by John Irving
The story of Edgar Sawtelle by D. Wroblewski
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway
A thousand splendid suns by Khaled Hosseini
