Bedside manner

     

        Today we go "through the keyhole" for a look at Mr. C's current bedtime reading (and can't you just hear Loyd's incredulous "who reads books like these? David, it's over to you" ?). As befits a man of his academic background, The Doc. has at all times a certain number of boring books on his bedside table, in fact if someone opened a shop and called it "Dull and Dusty", he'd be in there like a shot. He reads very widely, and we often read the same things and enjoy them equally or respond similarly, but then he has a tendency to wade through tomes which look to me more penitential than pleasurable. But that's up to him and his intellectual conscience!

    So what do the following say about him, I wonder? Some recent copies of "Trout and Salmon" magazine, a Latin/English dictionary to go with a couple of volumes of Virgil, some poetry in the shape of  By Heart: 101 Poems to Remember, Selected Poems by W. H. Auden, and 'A First Sighting' by Henry Marsh. Non-fiction - which always seems to predominate -  includes Peter Ackroyd's Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History by Philip Bobbitt, What If?: Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been by Robert Cowley, and Consilience by Edward O. Wilson. Mr. C. admits that one of those really is boring.

     To fiction next, and besides Reina James's This Time of Dying which I read recently and think he'll enjoy as much as I did, he has The World According to Bertie which is filling the humour gap usually occupied by Bertie Wooster, Jeeves and co. Curiously absent from the table just now, P. G. Wodehouse is one of Mr. C's all-time favourite authors (might we have a guest post on him??) and there's scarcely a gap in his collection; perfect for all occasions, they are especially welcome when the boring books have finally palled.

    Taken altogether that probably gives a pretty accurate picture of my husband. A poetry-loving historian with a very British sense of humour, a yearning for the river and the loch and a mind that likes to be stretched in many different directions. And he can cook, too!

Comments

[sherry]

Ha ha.
Incredible how a person's selection of books can be so revealing.

[rosie]

Thanks for that wonderful snapshot of life chez Cornflower. "Dull and Dusty" did make me laugh... Mr Caught Knitting (a scholar of literature, who often gets sidetracked by philosophy and literature) would love that, too. (But little does he know that I've tracked down some of his favourite childhood reading--Bobby Bear's Annual, 1945-- for Christmas. tee hee.)

[Lesley]

I'm guessing the one he found boring was the Bobbitt.

[sherry]

I looked at Albion, because it sounded interesting to me. The review hinted that it is boring...

[adele geras]

Mr C, I can attest, is also v. good-looking!

[Roobeedoo]

Ah ha! A very useful list for a last minute Christmas book for FL who sounds remarkably like Mr C! Lets hope I didn't pick the boring one...

[Barbara MacLeod]

Ditto for last minute Christmas book ideas for someone whose book choice and reading habits are not dissimilar! I'm taking a chance on Consilience. Many thanks!

[tara]

I love seeing Mr Cornflower's stack. My husband has a similar stack (sizewise) near his bedside. Lots of politics and current events, history, war, religion, and occasionally the odd fiction title rests there. Some of it interesting, some of guaranteed to put me to sleep.

[Les in NE]

What a clever idea for a post. I'll have to find time to sneak a picture of my husband's stack. I think he your's have similar tastes - at least in that they both enjoy heavy, nonfiction tomes.

[Nan]

You may have seen on my blog that my husband has begun War and Peace, and this will probably take forever, though I suspect he will put it aside occasionally to read other books. One that he is going to read over school vacation is Lawn Boy, the new Gary Paulsen. He's thinking he might read it aloud to his students.

I see from the comments, and also from so many blogs that my reading tends more towards "husband" reading. Wodehouse is my favorite of all time, I love John Mortimer, and Nick Hornby, and I favor nonfiction history and biography over fiction.

[Kathleen]

Interesting reads. I like the Dull and Dusty bookstore I think my husband visits that one quite regularly. He currently has two political, one WWII book, a political satire and some type of religious tomb that I have no idea even what religion it is. He wades thru them all slowly but surely.