Books as an escape

A book can transport you anywhere; to worlds both real and unreal, to lives and loves better or worse than our own. Every unread book holds the tantalising potential to make us see and feel something completely new. They can offer insights into everyday matters that we may be struggling with, or they can offer a brief escape from our day to day existence.

None of that is going to be news to anyone who reads regularly, and especially those who read romance. One of the most oft quoted appeals of romance novels is the escape they offer; it’s why over the top premises with billionaires, royalty, vampires, or FBI agents are so popular – protagonists that we are unlikely to meet in everyday life, can for a few hours, seem like people we could meet, know, like and fall in love with; people and plots we would hate to cope with in real life but which are exciting on the page at a safe remove. Then there are the romances with more prosaic day to day lives and loves and problems, they offer hope in their familiarity but with a guaranteed Happy Ever After – something most of us still work at every day.

It’s why books have been even more important to me, and to so many others, in the last year or so. As disaster after disaster has occurred and the political norms around the world have shifted, people will seek escape and hope wherever they can. I’m far from the only writer to have found it hard to sit down and create tales of people falling in love against the odds when acts of terrorism have been taking lives all around us and when peace between nations seems to be an increasingly fragile thing. Can I still believe in Happy Ever After when so many lives are being cut short and families ripped apart? Well I have to. Hope and love are two powerful forces and they may be what separates us from those who want to destroy our way of life – whether they be terrorists or politicians.

I’ve personally found it almost impossible to write in the last ten days given the appalling verdict on the death of Philando Castile in the US and what has happened at Grenfell Tower in London. Not even the amazing heroism of the firefighters can stop me from thinking of the people trapped and knowing what was going to happen….no, can’t do it. So I have been reading far more than usual these last few weeks and decided to post a few pictures of my years reading so far; if nothing else to remind me of how much pleasure books have brought me, how much of an escape they have offered, and to help me get back to my own writing, no matter how hard.

The first photo is of the Harlequin Romantic Suspenses I have read so far this year; it’s already almost as many I read all last year due to my giving up my reading time to write regularly back then. This year I’ve got better at managing my time and have also sacrificed tv watching to get back some precious reading time. I also didn’t read that many books in the latter half of last year as I (foolishly) decided that the way things were going politically and globally, it would be a good time to re-read 1984 and be reassured that things weren’t all that bad. Wrong. I posted a few thoughts while I was still part way through and I hope to write a longer post about it soon. As I also hope to do about The Secret History, a book I have been meaning to read for years and finally did and that (mostly) lived up to the almost impossible weight of expectation. It reminded me that this was why I started reading the classic Greek tragedies in 2015 – I knew I ought to have read the Bacchae before starting the Secret History but I became so caught up in the joy of reading the originals that I forgot to move back to the book that had inspired me! Again, the delightful morning spent in Foyles in London comparing translations of Euripides deserves a longer post.

Having bought the last Terry Pratchett Discworld novel, I went back and re read the previous Tiffany Aching book, I then struggled to read the Shepherd’s Crown, partly because of the thought that once it was finished, that was it, there would never be another Discworld novel; but also due to the slightly diminished style of the writing. Terry Pratchett was taken from us far too soon and I treasure all his books, even when his flashes of brilliant wit were fading and finally cruelly stopped before he had finished his last book as he would have wished. I can still remember the day my mother first gave me one of his books to read – Equal Rites – and how impatient we got for each new book (and ended up buying them in hardback as we just couldn’t wait.) It feels so wrong to have outlived the series. Indeed, because I was struggling with the Shepherd’s Crown I started another book – back when I lived alone I would have 3 or 4 books on the go at any one time as I discussed here, when talking about how I read, and I also said that the last Ian Rankin I had read had been a rare book where I could read a hundred pages a day – and it happened again. I think I read it in 5 days which is possibly a record for me, although it’s also a sad reflection on how much in the real world I was trying to forget.

How is everyone else’s reading year going? I am currently stuck trying to decide what to read next. After the Secret History I feel I need something where every sentence doesn’t make me pause to let its beauty sink in – I  loved it and almost want to read more by Tartt right away, but I know it’s too soon. I have many books by authors whose writing inspires a similar – desire I suppose! Their writing makes me fall in love with the written word, and make me long to write half as well. But I still think I need a change of pace, the Rankin and the Pratchett gave me that a bit but I need to be in the right frame of mind to immerse myself certain books – it’s why I delayed the Secret History for so many years. I was reminded today of the Greek Classics, maybe it’s time to re-read Aristophanes for something a little lighter, or back to Aeschylus. It will be interesting to see what my end of year list looks like.

And most importantly of all, the blessed moments of respite, escape, hope, love and laughter that I have found in reading other people’s books have driven me back to writing my own; maybe I can offer someone else a few hours happiness further down the line.

How do you read?

Does the film of the book run through your mind? Is it a serious of snapshots? Or is it all about the words? Can you dip in and out of multiple books at once or do you fully immerse yourself in one and rarely come up for air?

My 5 favorite books, their relative batteredness depends on how many people I have lent them to, and how new they were when I got them

Every book I have read since the age of eighteen has been kept, some have been read more than once and will be again and again. Each time I take them down I can see and feel and remember where I last read them. Listing favourite books is almost impossible – I did it in my Q&A post below after years of mulling it over – but what exactly is a favourite? Is it because of the writing? The plot? How it made me feel? How it affected my life? The person I was when I read it – or the person I was when I finished it? Especially if I didn’t actually enjoy the book. There are ones that are important because of when or where I was reading them, or because of who gave them to me, or recommended them – subsection disappointing recommendations by adored people. Those whose importance is that I found them myself – or they chose me by being irresistible on a book shop table, those that led me to even greater book, those I still dream about.

One of the things I plan to do on this blog is talk about favourite books, but I’ve realised I need to talk about how I read first. Since about the age of seven or eight I have read constantly, but slowly. Friends who would say they aren’t really readers finish more books a year than I do. I can partly blame small children and family life for that these days but even when I lived alone and my time was my own – oh for some of that time back now – I didn’t finish many books a year simply because of how slowly I read.

Being positive I would say I read thoroughly – but does that sound too dismissive of fast readers? I don’t mean it to. I guess I read cinematically, I visualise everything in the scene as I read it to the point that if something is mentioned in a scene that I haven’t registered before, I sometimes go back and re read the scene to “picture” it correctly. The most common instance of this is when someone is driving a car in a US set book and one of them turns their head to the left to look at the driver and I remember that we drive on the opposite side of the car here and I have to go back and re read the scene with each character in their proper place. Why? I’m not sure, I’ve just always done this, the words create moving pictures in my head and it’s why as soon as a book is mentioned , no matter how long ago I read it, a scene is instantly there in my mind.

It is possibly because I read like this that I never need book marks. I am baffled by people who scream if their place in a book is lost (never mind my rage for those who bend over the corners of pages to keep their place.) How can they not just pick up the book and find where they were? Don’t they remember? If you open the book at random and read half a line don’t you know if you have already read it or not? Because I either see the scene instantly, or don’t (having not yet read it), I can work my way backwards or forwards until I find where I was, although I usually open the book within three pages to either side as my hands seem to know as soon as I pick up the book how far into the book I was.

This also gives me the ability to find any given scene in a book many years after I read it. I thought all people had this knack until my best friend said that in her book club she is always asked to find the pages they are discussing because no one else can find the place as surely or swiftly.

2 books, both over 900 pages long and both read on beach holidays. One was also borrowed by someone else (and ok, I’ve read it far more than once)

As for how you do this with electronic books, well that would be a whole new post. Is it wrong to love the physical feel and look of books so much? This brings me back to the dog-earing of pages I mentioned before. Oh the horror. For a while none of my family would ever borrow books from me because of the rage or anguish I exhibited (or worse, tried to hide) when they returned the book in anything less than a pristine condition. I’ve managed to read paperback books of over five hundred pages and not left a mark on the spine. But I have mellowed (presumably now I show more than a few marks of wear and tear myself) and I value the dents on a book’s cover that tell as much a story to me as the printed words (the sand stuck in the pages of Tom Jones from a very windy Cretan beach, the water damaged pages in Vanity Fair due to an exploding bottle of fizzy water on a Cuban balcony.)

One other reason for being a slow reader is that I usually have three to four books on the go at once. The main book that is my first choice, a romance and a classic text, either ancient Greek or Arthurian. The reason for this is that no matter how much I am loving a book, I can rarely read more than 50 pages in one sitting. One of the most exciting parts of going away for a two week holiday was always planning my reading; going through my stacks of to-be-read books, getting a long list, or pile of around 15 books, usually still popping into Waterstones when I was supposed to be in Boots buying sun cream and mosquito repellent and buying 2 or 3 new books, getting the list down to 8 and trying to never take more than 6 (even on a fortnight away with nothing to do but enjoy myself – which would mean reading from dawn till dusk if I was lucky – I knew I wouldn’t read more than 6 books because I would be taking books I had been longing to read and savouring them even more than my usual slow cinematic style.) So I would read 50 pages of one, then dip into another, onto a third, then back to book 2 again and so on all day all holiday. Maybe it’s a delayed gratification thing, making as many books as possible last as long as possible, rather than racing through one to rush onto another? The bittersweet finishing of a book you have loved reading is hard to beat and this way I could postpone the parting, or have several giddy goodbyes close together.

The 4 that wouldn’t let me put them down

My inability to read more than 50 pages has only been over ruled by book passion on a handful of occasions which saw me staying up till 3 in the morning before having to go to work the next day – John Le Carré’s Honourable Schoolboy and Arianna Franklin’s Mistress of the Art of Death (this was a book I had discovered just days earlier after almost giving up on Diana Norman ever writing another book and I tried to make it last but failed.) Two years ago when I was laid up with a damaged ankle and read voraciously for two weeks, I devoured the last 150 pages of Ian Rankin’s The Falls and the last 200 of Jane Harris’ Gillespie and I on almost consecutive nights (I was sleeping a lot during the day due to pain.) I put those two binges down to the fact that for the first time ever I thought I had guessed a Rebus villain – and I was right! And because Gillespie and I had the most unreliable narrator I had ever read and I was desperate to find out their final comeuppance.

In the last few years, when my reading time has been reduced, I have still managed to read books that fill all my various criteria above – writing and plotting that has blown me away, ones that make me look at the world and myself differently as I close the final page, ones that have made me cry, ones that I have instantly recommended to friends and family, ones that I want to re-read as soon as possible. No matter how much I love a book while I am reading it, I know there are more treasures out there to be found and savoured. Reading truly is the gift that keeps giving. Which books have made you stay up all night, or keep you returning for just one more re-read? Can you narrow your favourites down to five?