Bookstack

 

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused...

- William Wordsworth

What books have you been reading this autumn?

If I tried to hold all the books I have read, my arm would be crushed.

Keeping with my goal of reading a new classic each month (a classic I have never read), I am also intertwining poetry and mystery at the same time. This is just a little stack of the books I have recently finished, books that have continued to stay in my mind since closing the cover on the last page.

My poetry book lately has been the collaboration of Wordsworth and Coleridge in their Lyrical Ballads, published first in 1798, which is a bit of an oxymoron, as something lyrical being emotional and a ballad being structured and storytelling. And yet their revolutionary poetry established the romantic poetry of the 1800s incorporating emotion and feeling through nature and story. This collection was the start of a shift in English poetry, with many other poets to come along following their pen marks.

On the theme of poetry, Simon Armitage's collected Oxford lectures, that he gave whilst he was the professor of poetry (a 4 year term), are a thoughtful, expanding meditation on poetry in the modern view, using the old and new to fuse into the generative environment we have now. I always enjoy reading or listening to Simon's thoughts on poetry and our modern age.

Murder mysteries in the spirit of the golden age of mysteries (Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers) are always appealing to me. Such books from the 1920's - 1950's are dubbed cosy murder mysteries, which may seem contradicting, but I totally get it. What is cosy about murder? It is about getting lost in a case, losing yourself in solving that mystery, and in some sense they are fantasy books because the murder and the situation is so fantastical it is an escape from the everyday. I've always liked solving mysteries and finding clues along the way. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was such a good murder mystery with a general classic look at first glance, but one that throws people way off at the end. The Devil and the Dark Water was written in this kind of tradition of mystery, but written today with a modern voice. This story takes on a historical aspect as well, taking place in the 1640s. 

My classic of the month was The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy. It was my $1 find at a library sale a few months ago. I had not read any books by Hardy yet, and I will say his prose descriptions on nature and people is beautiful, yet his characters are set-up for doom. There is a sense of futility of life and the mishaps and bad decisions made over time will catch-up to you. When I felt some hope of a character looking to redeem their past, they would turn back like a magnet, setting up their future doom. There were so many instances of wanting the characters to choose differently, which reminds me that every choice we make will impact our future (good or ill, loving or cruel). That is a realistic thought to meditate on - consequence.