Exploring the Bedside Book Stash

April 26th, 2009

Life Magazine

At night I burrow into a pile of blankets and sigh. No more phone calls, emails, demands, must do’s and didn’t do’s. I sigh with anticipation as well, because I know the pleasure that awaits me. Then I reach out my hand, grope for my book and drag my paper companion into my warm and dishevelled bed.

There is a crowd of these books next to the bed, discarded after I’ve had my way with them, or not sufficiently interesting, or eagerly awaiting my attentions or simply too weighty and serious and requiring more than I can give.

The alpha book, as it were, is D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I’m halfway through this and when finished with it each night, I rest it on the plinth of these other books.

Curious as to what books were actually playing the supporting roles, I decided to dismantle the structure and examine the parts.…

Plinth A

Women, A Novel, Charles Bukowski

I was charmed by Bukowski’s poems and coaxed into reading his novels by a dear friend. Perhaps I should have read them earlier in life but was too smitten by Jack Kerouac. And then I moved on to something else. I only have about an eighth of this book to go before finishing, but I have to be in a very particular mood for Bukowski. And quite often that mood has fled by the time I go to bed. He’s a daytime read for me. A long black, a few jitters and an upright chair.

Where Angels Fear to Tread, E.M. Forster

A huge disappointment and I don’t know why it’s still next to the bed. I loved A Passage to India and Howard’s End, but this book was his first and is as awkward and spotty as you would expect. It will be banished to the pile intended for the second hand bookshop.

The Children, Edith Wharton

This book is waiting for an Edith Wharton moment. She is a favourite of mine and this will be my next read, I suspect, after Mellors and Connie have had their way with each other and gone off to live the primal life somewhere.

Plinth B

The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler

The first paragraph reeled me in and by the end of the second I had to have it. This is an edition that includes Farewell My Lovely and The Long Goodbye. Chandler has followed me around for years, always in the shadows, but when I came upon this edition…I knew it was time.

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

Now this is a very big chunk to chew and needs perfect reading conditions. It resides by the bed in the hope that those conditions will again occur. By perfect reading conditions I mean, absolutely nothing happening in one’s life, or only the tedious and the everyday. Preoccupation with problems kills the reading of all but the easiest books. Anna’s marriage and infidelity must take precedence.
Down the side and stacked against the wall within easy reaching distance from the bed lie two more towers.

Tower Small

Daemon, Verity Crowe

This is a self published book by a writer friend who shares my interest in the classical world. Dr. Crowe sent me this book from her abode at the base of the French Alps, a short distance from Mont Blanc. As I have good memories of being on the Italian Monte Bianco I am determined to read Dr. Crowe’s book.

A very scatty reason for reading a book, but no more so than an interesting cover photo – a marketing strategy I have succumbed to. I was so taken with the cover of one book, but bored by its contents, I tore the cover off and pinned it up in my study and put the rest in the recycling.

Little Birds, Anais Nin

This book of erotic short stories is in the pile as a research item. ‘Oh yeah,’ I hear you say. But as a writer who includes sex scenes in her books I have to read how others approach similar material. Anais does it well, and she does it with a true feel for the erotic as opposed to a mechanics manual.

Tower Big

Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton

Dear old Edith again. This is one of the saddest of her books, and one that I finished in tears. The House of Mirth, another of her books, produced not only tears but also sobbing and hiccups during the last quarter of the book. There is something about Lily Bart’s fate, and the combination of her naiveté, her prejudices and her resistance that resonates with me. Some would simply put the book down and say ‘silly girl.’

Stalin-In the Court of the Red Tzar, Simon Sebag Montefiore.

Now I’m back at the research book. One of the characters in The Book of Love, William, is of Russian descent and produced in me an acute Russian phase.
Vodka, kasha, pickled mushrooms, and black bread were all consumed while reading the Arkady Renko novels by Martin Cruz Smith. Friends were plied with stroganoff, more vodka and Gregorian chant until the required level of melancholy was achieved.

A Stained White Radiance, Jamie Lee Burke

Read it and plopped it on the pile. A good writer and a story teller. Must reshelve.

Diary of an Art Dealer, Rene Gimpel

I picked this 1963 edition up in a second hand bookshop. The back cover informed me that Gimpel had been a great international art dealer and during the period of the diary – 1918 to 1938 - the French, English and American art worlds are scrutinized and ‘many anecdotes revealed.’ How irresistible to one with an art background.
I haven’t read it yet, and have vague hopes of ‘bare all’ anecdotes of Renoir or Mary Cassat wrestling with their creative demons. But a quick browse has revealed perhaps less interesting snippets. For example, Gimpel writes of Proust coming to visit, ‘Proust always felt the cold; even in an overheated room he doesn’t take off his thickly lined overcoat.’
I must be generous and give more time to Monsieur Gimpel, perhaps I’ll find what I’m looking for. He stays by the bed.

The Memory Room, Christopher Koch.

Koch is one of my favourite Australian authors. I’ve read The Year of Living Dangerously a couple of times enjoying his brilliant recreation of the atmosphere surrounding the final moments of the Sukarno regime in Indonesia.

Couples, John Updike

I read this book many years ago during an Updike binge. I loved his Rabbit books and upon finishing them felt that awful sense of loss when you know you have to move on, that there are no more in the series to be read, and you will never, ever read anything good again and may as well read comic books. I found Couples soon after. His writing about sex impressed me at the time, and so when I came upon another copy of the book in a second hand bookshop I bought it and mentally place it on my ‘Writing the Sexual Encounter Research Shelf.’

I don’t need to have these books next to the bed. I do have plenty of bookshelves. But somehow just having the one book I am currently reading feels forlorn and a little cold, a little too organised.

My book stash is far from a chaotic pile littered with old tissues and nail polish bottles and unpaid bills. It’s more a warm and organic outgrowth of my thought processes over the last few months. I know why they are there- because each has come a little closer to my consciousness than those books on the shelves - and they form a small chorus each night to croon me softly to sleep.

Categories: on reading | Tags: books, reading, writing