Bookworm

When I moved into my house in July of last year I inherited the VSO library – a collection of over 150 books built up over a number of years going back to the days when there were as many as a dozen VSO volunteers in Mae Sot. From the copious quantities of dust, cobwebs and lizard droppings all over the books and shelves, it was clear that no-one had taken an interest in the library for some time. In the interest of cleanliness and creating shelf-space I decided to carry out a radical downsizing operation, and after carefully selecting around thirty books that I liked the look of, I gave the rest away to a local organization.

When I lived in the UK and Italy, the only time I ever tended to read was in bed before going to sleep. In fact, I would often fall asleep reading, and would then have to go back and re-read the next night to remember what was going on. (I read the whole of “The Name of the Rose” in this fashion, at a time when I must have been especially tired, managing only a page or so at a time. By the time I got to the end of the book, I had absolutely no idea what it had all been about. Thank goodness for the film and Sean Connery!)

Here, with a slightly different pace of life and priorities, I have rediscovered the joy of spending lazy afternoons lying on my bed with the dappled sunlight dancing through the window, getting completely engrossed in a book.

These are the books I have read and, with only one or two exceptions, thoroughly enjoyed – testament either to the good literary taste of VSO volunteers or to my ability to pick out books I will like. (I suspect the latter – some of the ones I got rid of looked like complete rubbish!)

Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – A C Doyle

The Bean Trees – Barbara Kingsolver

Me Talk Pretty Some Day – David Sedaris

The Long Song – Andrea Levy

A Week in December – Sebastian Faulks

The Slap – Christos Tsiolkas

Shakespeare – Bill Bryson

The Help – Kathryn Stockett

The Book Thief – Markus Zusak

First Love, Last Rites – Ian McEwan

The Big Snow – David Park

Beatrice and Virgil – Yann Martel

The Pianist – Wladyslaw Szpilman

A Fool’s Alphabet – Sebastian Faulks

When a Crocodile eats the Sun – Peter Godwin

The Lacuna – Barbara Kingsolver

Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason and the Gap Between Us and Them – Joshua Greene

Status Anxiety – Alain De Botton

The Gathering – Anne Enright

A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines

Burmese Days – George Orwell

The Constant Gardner – John Le Carre

Winter in Madrid – C. J. Sansom

Started Early, Took my Dog – Kate Atkinson

Prodigal Summer – Barbara Kingsolver

My Life as a Fake – Peter Carey

Any Human Heart – William Boyd

The Finkler Question – Howard Jacobson

Dead Famous – Ben Elton

Parrot and Olivier in America – Peter Carey

Map of the Invisible World – Tash Aw

Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother – Xinran

Restless Souls: Rebels, Refugees, Medics and Misfits on the Thai-Burma Border – Phil Thornton

 Perhaps I should make it a resolution to make more time for reading when I come home…