I'm reading again. It's a big deal.

I haven't read with such intensity and desire for years. Hive, it's kinda your fault - you take up a lot of my reading time. So does Instagram, and Netflix, and various other attention thieves. I've always been in love with stories, so you can't blame me glutting on wherever I can get my fill.

Hedonism has an expiry. Like drugs, sex and food, I had reached the point where I was a little bloated, pushing the plate away from me, the stacks of books onto the bookshelf and even to charity shops, because finally I was done with books. Once a sign of wealth - of intelligence, of information, of worlds, they were now just clutter.

Nothing held my attention. I was down to two books a year if I was lucky. They had to be pretty special for me to persevere beyond the first chapter.

But then Dad died, and I picked up the book he was reading in that last week. Or rather, that Mum was reading to him. It was by an Aussie author called Jock Serong, Cherrywood, set in Melbourne. On the third page was a tiny dried speck of mandarin. My heart broke. I was sad that this was his last book - I didn't get it. I read three quarters of it and gave up, something I would never have done when I was reading a hundred books a year. Life is too short for books you don't enjoy. But the spirit of my father danced between the pages, and I realised that by reading, I kept his spirit with me. Dad read Murakami, though he didn't know why. He loved Henry Lawson's The Loaded Dog, about a dog who stole a stick of lit dynamite. He liked Cormac Mc Carthy's 'All the Pretty Horses'. There was always a new book at my parents place. I used to leave with armloads full. They were always good literature, although Mum would quite often sneak in less highbrow numbers, usually post apocalyptic, which we devoured with fervour whilst my father read something more serious.

Not having money to buy books, I turned to the library. It'd been a minute - I had tossed my card in symbolic protest when I'd returned a pile of overdue books in an amnesty that required you to also bring a bag of cans for charity. The librarian had been remiss and not recorded my gesture, so that I was accused of not returning them. Fuck the library, I had seethed, but I was secretly leaving books behind then. Teaching literature can also render you numb to the written word, and I barely had time in those days to divert my car to one of the regional libraries.

Now it's all automated and online. Even the card is a barcode on the app. I can search for a book and reserve it, and check it out without speaking to the librarian at all, though they are all very nice. They even curate the books mindfully, putting the prize winners facing out so I don't have to judge a book by it's spine. I have to set aside time to read, force my concentration, but I'm determined. One gains a lot from books, as us booklovers know. I can hear Dad saying: 'what are you reading?" and me coming up with silence. That's not good enough. Sorry, ghost Dad.

I begin with Newitz's 'The Terrafirmers', reminscent of the Heinlein and Le Guin other true sci fi masters I'd read from my mother's shelf in the '80's. It explores the efforts of a group of settlers to terraform a planet across millenia and create a sustainable ecosystem, whilst unravelling the nefarious overreach of the company who oversees it with the view to sell properties for profit. It delves into themes of environmentalism, societal growth, and the consequences of colonization as the characters face challenges in transforming a barren world into a thriving habitat - with some interesting lifeforms that are intentionally bred and assigned intelligence according to bureaucratic assessments that, like human beings now, divide intelligence into classes. I enjoy it for it's richly imaginative world building, but I don't finish it. I can anticipate the ending - as I said, I've read alot, and I won't finish a book if I'm bored.

I did finish this one, as I found myself wondering whether Theo and Darla would reconcile after Theo leaves Darla on a mountainside and she goes missing. The story is set in 2020 and is rich with characters used to explore class, priviledge and social dynamics. The title refers to the wealthy New Yorkers escaping the pandemic to their summer houses in the countryside. Told in vignettes, it was an interesting historical snapshot of time and place which I imagine will have more resonance in the future.

Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange is similarly a story of America, albeit the heart rendering account of a Native American family. It's a story of anger and love, and the violence of America on it's own people. Mud and Stars is poles away - I haven't begun it yet but it's a non fiction about travelling in Russia with the stories of writers such as Pushkin, Tolstoy, Lermontov and Chekhov, amongst others, to guide her. I often grab a few non fiction to please Jamie, though I dip into them myself or he relates the story to me. I had picked him up a book on disappeared towns in England called Shadowlands which he enjoyed, and now he's onto a book about bikepacking.

Today I was enjoying (and will do again, when I finish this distraction of a post) Simpatica. IT's was longlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize and is set in Venezuela during a mass exodus of the intellectual class with many leaving their pets behind. Ulises Kan, a movie buff is tasked with transforming his family home into a shelter for abandoned dogs in exchange for inheriting a luxurious apartment.

As I search for the books I've taken photos of over the last two months for this post, I find this photo - my son playing guitar and my Dad on the couch, in the last months of his life. He had redesigned the bookshelf in his mind, which he wanted to build from timber and extend, but never did. Some projects in a man's life are never finished.

It's not the only bookshelf - there's a large one in the back room, as well, and the shelf above his desk, which stays as a memorial of sorts, with the little brass om, his camera, and other remnants of his life. The rest of his life lives on in us. His passions find life in ours.

Every time I finish a book, I think of whether Dad would have liked it.

With Love,

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