“ She would not say of any one in the world now that they were this or were that. She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.
— Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
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“ We shall read all the evening and go to bed.
— Virginia Woolf, diary entry January 2nd 1915
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“ What I didn’t yet understand was the importance of taste and timing. Books are like people. Some look deceptively attractive from a distance, some deceptively unappealing; some are easy company, some demand hard work that isn’t guaranteed to pay off. Some become friends and say friends for life. Some change in our absence — or perhaps it is we who change in theirs — and we meet up again only to find that we don’t get along any more.
— Mark Haddon, The Right Words in the Right Order
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“ We all read differently. You may think you know Maggie Tulliver or Esther Summerson, better than some members of your own family, and I may feel the same, but you and I know very different versions of those characters. Because reading is never simply reading. Reading always involves writing too. A novel is an invitation to complete an imaginary world. If the novel is good we do it without hatting an eyelid.
— Mark Haddon, The Right Words in the Right Order
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“ It’s hard enough to explain your own passion, let alone why someone else might share it.
— Mark Haddon, The Right Words in the Right Order
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“ It brings out the fundamental difference between people in daily life and people in books. In daily life we never understand each other, neither complete clairvoyance nor complete confessional exists. We know each other approximately, by external signs, and these serve well enough as a basis for society and even for intimacy. But people in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes; their inner as well as their outer life can be exposed. And this is why they often seem more definite than characters in history, or even our own friends; we have been told all about them that can be told; even if they are imperfect or unreal they do not contain any secrets, whereas our friends do and must, mutual secrecy being one of the conditions of life upon this globe.
— E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel
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“ So that art, which consumes enormous amounts of human labour and of human lives, and breaks down love among people, not only is not anything clearly and firmly defined, but is understood in such contradictory ways by its lovers, that it is difficult to say what generally is understood as art, and particularly as good, useful art, in the name of which such sacrifices as are offered to it may rightly be offered.
— Leo Tolstoy, What is Art?
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I’ve decided to finally make good on my promise of a travelling book in the new year. These are The Rules, or rather, how it’s going to work.
I am picking two books I want sent round — The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa and Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson. I love them both.
You cannot chose both books, because I imagine (hopefully!) there will be quite a few people who will want to do this.
So:
- The idea is that when you receive the book, you read it and annotate it. Highlight, underline, scribble in the margins. Pick a method/pen and stick to it so we can differentiate between people. You must do some form of marginalia. The results are why I think this can be interesting.
- I will need everyone’s addresses, but the only other person who will have your address will be the person who has the book prior to you.
- You will have six weeks to read the book, after which you have to mail it to the next person, whether or not you’ve read it. If you haven’t, obviously that would be enormously disappointing because there will be fewer comments/marginalia in the book.
- I will chose six people per book, so that it should come back to me at the end of the year.
- If you want to do this, you have to be aware that you will need to mail the book on. I know that pretty much everywhere in the world it’s expensive to mail books, so I haven’t chosen long, thick books. But please please don’t agree to it if you can’t airmail the book forward.
I’ll be contacting some people who said they wanted to do this when I first mentioned it, but please put your name in the hat if you want to join!! Reblog and comment, or send me an ask, or an email. Any form to let me know you’re interested. I’ll need at least six people per book for this to work. I’m really excited about it, and I hope you guys are too.
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