A
Few Words
About Words
Favourite Books
Mythology and Modern Fiction
Reference and Non-fiction
Food for Thought
Crone's Reading List
Books for the Journey Home
On My Library Table
Book Notes
There are times in modern life when one needs to get away, far, far away, and there can be no distant oasis or lofty aerie more rejuvenating, no finer companions, than a good book, a mug of Lapsang tea and a Morris chair. Books and written words exercise their own discrete charm and power. They possess in abundance admirable qualities sadly lacking in our day to day existence, qualities of rigour, cadence, elegance, form, simplicity, and from time to time, incandescent beauty. Books are glorious adventures, journeys along winding paths toward towers in the mist or the dragon's lair, safaris to lost and exotic cities, camel caravans bound for Persian markets and faraway mountain villages. When one opens a good book, one can hear the lapping of waves upon the shore, the rustle of the wind in the trees, the songs of larks at sunrise and the tolling of distant bells. While reading a good book, one can leave the world behind and take wing.
I spend much of my spare time reading - books have been well loved companions since I learned to read at an early age, and I have been escaping into them ever since. If the Norns permit and the Goddess and God are kind, books will be my companions as long as I can hold them, turn their pages, peer at the inky words, and conjure up the thousand and one worlds just waiting for a traveller and pilgrim to open a book and reveal their rainbow colours, fragrance, gentle music and ineluctable magic. Every good book ever written is chock full of spells and cantrips.
The thought of turning homeward at the day's end without a good book waiting leaves me feeling anxious, alone, and a little sad. When the office door closes every day, I think of pleasant journeys to be resumed within the pages of the book in progress, and nothing makes me happier than a trip to my favourite book shop. There are so many glorious words, and only a single lifetime in which to befriend them.