SHAISTA'S BOOKS

This year begins the sixth year of my blog Lupus in Flight. Six years! I have never been so conscious of time's passing and her markings as I have this year. It feels a little breathless all of a sudden. It feels as though everything has already happened. Everything that truly matters is already in place. I was a curly haired child with goober glasses only yesterday. Tomorrow my nieces will turn thirteen, my cousins will celebrate their silver and gold anniversaries, my school friends and I will look into each other's eyes and shake our seventy year old heads in wonder. How? When? we will say...

My body hurts today. I stop, breathe, look deeply for the site of hurt, but I can't quite separate it. Hurt is always difficult to isolate. Remember the scene in Amélie when the little boy's marbles, hard won in the playground, burst out of the pockets of his uniform and to his horror, roll away? Never to be gathered. The best moment of his life becomes the worst, the unforgettable tragedy. That's how it feels, sometimes. All my precious marbles are in place, tucked safely into pockets of my soul, but my body's cells and organs are threatening to tear the seams, spill everything out. I rely on you to remind me we are all connected by the red thread and nothing that once was found can be lost.

So it is with my books. The last time I read a book all the way through in a few sittings was in 2012, at the start of my Masters. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, in case you were wondering. Since then, another glaucoma operation has put paid to my ability to read with any comfort at all. I can still read but I find myself picking at the tops of books, first chapters, beginnings... And then hurriedly gathering another to me. I have read so much and want to re-read so many, but there is always more and more to read. Social media is battering away at my eyes with its continuous streams of articles. All so interesting, so much entirely unnecessary. I must choose between this and that, but which to choose? Either I disengage or try to keep up.

Stop the clock for a moment and celebrate what you have read, Shaista, is what I tell myself. So a week ago I started a new blog - a library is what it intends to be. A reference of books I am reading, have read, crave. The title is simple - Shaista's Books - no Latin words here. Just a Persian one. I have already written four posts so will you stop by and take a look? The posts will be linked to the top right hand corner of this blog so you can always access the other blog. I am often asked what I'm reading or if I have books to recommend; the new blog is the beginning of my answer. At any rate, it's an experiment, just as this blog once was!

Books Actually

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
~ Jane Austen, from Pride and Prejudice.

On the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens, I wanted to share something of bookstores and libraries - I recently stumbled across some of these collections online so they are not places I have visited, but isn't the internet brilliant for couchsurfing? In Paris, there is a bookstore called Shakespeare & Company, which looks delicious...

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare ~ Kenko Yoshida wrote that some time between 1283 and 1350. What would he have thought of a movie palace being converted into a reading room? This is the Librería El Ateneo Grand Splendid in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which uses theatre boxes for reading rooms...

A good book should leave you... slightly exhausted at the end.  You live several lives while reading it. William Styron, who wrote that in 1958, would perhaps have approved of the Poplar Kids' Republic in Beijing, China - cosy nooks for naps everywhere!

I quite like this quote: "Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are" is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you re-read ~ François Mauriac.

There is a bookstore in Mexico which has a trail of greenery wrought around the books, and a tiny one I love in Singapore, which is endlessly quirky, called Books Actually. Bookstores are becoming magical places, but some libraries are really extraordinary, like this ornate cathedral to books in Coimbra, Portugal...

or the University of Salamanca library in Spain, which is brilliantly colourful...

Of course, the college libraries in Cambridge hold a special place, like Wren's and Queen's...

but my favourite bookstore/library was tiny, cramped, dark, dusty, and very likely long destroyed. We used it during our childhood trips to Mahableshwar, a favourite colonial hill station. The librarian was terrifying and extremely strict. The books and comics were crammed together in cupboards, but the ecstatic illusion of feeling one could choose anything and take home plenty, has lasted all these years. I wonder if my brothers remember... I shall have to ask! Meanwhile, am off to hospital tomorrow for a very long day of infusions - and the kindle shall serve as my magical portable library.

Images from flavorwire via and via