There are piles of books on both sides of the bed. Mine is almost totally fiction with a little biography maybe. My husband’s is made up of science and computer journals, some mainly musical biography and a few art books. It is rare for a book to move from one side of the bed to the other, so rare that I wanted to remember the very short list of books that had achieved this feat. The Shepherds Life and Pastoral Song by James Rebanks are the first books to note. Rebanks writes of a life of farming and the modern day problems with continuing to farm in what can only be called a traditional somewhat old fashioned way. He succeeds in doing this but only by supporting the farm with writing and consultancy work. Beautifully written, these books caused much discussion.
I bought London Parks by Hunter Davies as a gift for my husband and then also read it myself. It helped me in the lockdown when for strange reasons I was struggling with fiction. We also used the book to sort various walks and visits when we could get on a train again.
In a reciprocal fashion One, Two, Three, Four, The Beatles in Time was a present from him to me. Living as we did through the Beatles’ years meant that this book happily resonated with both of us.
Spring Cannot be Cancelled by David Hockney was a book we both thought we would dip into but actually we both read it cover to cover. The book title was used and re-used again and again by other writers and journalists. It was a timely phrase during Covid lockdowns.
So, do most readers feel a need to share and discuss their reading with others? I think I am fairly self sufficient in this area although it is of course energising to find one of similar interests with whom to talk books. Book clubs fill this need to a great extent … but more of them another time.
‘It is difficult to believe that anything is worthwhile unless there is some eye to kindle in common with our own, some brief word uttered now and then to say what is infinitely precious to us is precious alike to another mind.’
George Eliot
A friend in Malaga, Spain who I used to stay with, had this passage engraved on a plaque in her house. I liked it and wrote it down. Maybe it is this that makes those books that travel to both sides of the bed so special.