A Book-Tuesday Linkup!

I haven't been doing much that's exciting today and I thought a book-themed post might be interesting instead.

 

 

In the long-ago I had a fairly large collection of books - at a rough guess, a couple of thousand.  It's kind of a family thing: one of my brothers-in-law has said that you can always tell when you go into a Tuck home because the bookshelves outnumber all the other furniture combined.  The ex also loved

reading, so in the before-time our house kind of resembled the library from Beauty and the Beast -

 

 

(OK, I exaggerate, but you get the idea). She now has about 95% of my books.  I'm not particularly upset about that: I'd read all but a few of them and if she has them, Grace and Rachel will eventually get to read them too.  The only ones I'd ever seek to get back are a couple of first editions and one or two that have sentimental value.  Be that as it may, my personal library now looks like (well, is) this -

 

 

I love to read, and so I also took a picture of my bedside table with its mass of books, journals and magazines on it.

 

 

I wrote a list of the books in that heap (including two that were out of shot) and found that that particular pile consisted of the following -

• American Bar Association Journal (2015), vol. 101(4)
• Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (2009)
• American Historical Review (2014), vol. 119(4)
• CFA/SES, Road Rescue Learning Manual (2005)
• American Historical Review (2014), vol. 119(5)
• Clive James, The Meaning of Recognition (2006)
• American Historical Review (2015), vol. 120(1)
• Commerical Transport Litigation Committee, Damages (2014)
• Entertainment & Sports Lawyer (2015), vol. 31(4)
• G Fletcher and S. Sheppard, American Law in a Global Context (2005)
• American Rifleman (2015), vol. 163(4)
• Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski, The Blueprint (2010)
• Kevin Gutzman, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution (2007)
• Law Institute Journal (2015) vol. 89(4)
• Mark Levin, Men in Black (2005)
• Memorial Hall Foundation Newsletter (Feb. 2015)
• Perspectives on History (2015) vol. 53(3)
• PJ O'Rourke, The CEO of the Sofa (2001)
• Rebecca Fraser, The Story of Britain (2003)
• The Young Lawyer (2015), vol. 15(2)
• Tort, Trial and Insurance Practice Law Journal (2015), vol. 50(2)

Setting them out like that suggested a few things to me.

 

First, the law occupies much more of my reading time that I'd have guessed it did. On the other hand, a fair bit of the legal literature I have overlaps with political (or semi-political) writers like Gutzman and Sen.  There's some method in that apparent madness: My strong instinct is that the next American presidential election will encompass some powerful arguments about sovereignty and transnational law (especially if Ted Cruz's campaign takes off), and I'd like to have some idea of the lines of argument before they're made.

 

Second, I clearly don't have much time for fiction.  This isn't really a surprise:  At a rough guess, since high school I've read maybe three works of fiction, two of them in the last two years.  One of these was The Absolutist, the conclusion of which I found fairly unsatisfying even though the book itself was well crafted.  Its strongest merit was its unsparing description of the conditions of warfare on the western front in the First World War, which gave the lie to Ron Horrigan's shameful claim that “Englishmen have always been well prepared to die bravely for their country just as long as there is a certain amount of comfort associated with the whole thing” (1). The second book, The Silmarillion, had more of an impact on me. J.R.R. Tolkien's description of a world left to wallow in trauma by an almost-criminally negligent god and demigods left me scrutinising - and nearly abandoning - my own faith for nearly a year after I started to compare it to our own world.  The Silmarillion was initially drafted between 1914 and 1937, and seems to reflect Tolkien's own experience of the world-shattering agony of the First World War; maybe doubt of divine providence was part of its point (2).  I think my aversion to fiction is partly a reaction to literature itself.  For one thing, writers of literature seem amazingly self-regarding: there is some bizarre belief that their books should be published even though no known audience wants to buy them.  And the genre's chief pleasure has been described in terms that border on self-gratificatory -

Have you ever wanted to savor a meal because you’ve never tasted anything so good? Well, if you’re new to literary fiction, or can never seem to “get into it,” this is how you should try approaching it.

Think of the book as a meal with intricate scents, flavors and textures that you can’t quite recognize unless you spend a little more time with it, and give it some undivided attention. Because, trust me, sitting down a little longer than usual, to enjoy your meal, can be liberating, especially if accompanied by a great glass of red.

Sensory information is, more often than not, a huge focus in literary works. Literary fiction, unfortunately, gets a bad wrap for all the description it uses. This makes me sad because I adore it. I never used to. Until I realized how much there is to appreciate.

I’m convinced that some people think literary fiction is boring because they have the wrong expectations. Most literary works are not heavy on plot. It exists, but it is not usually the main focus. Primarily, the focus is on character and theme. So you cannot expect to pick up a literary novel and become so caught up in the story that you can’t bear to put it down. But so what? Each reading experience should be different, and inspire you in different ways. They should trigger questions, stimulate learning curves and general intrigue for the new. So, before you dismiss the idea of picking up another literary novel, because you didn’t get the thrilling ride of the last suspense you read, try taking a different approach.

 

It's like hearing somebody say, with no discernible sense of self-parody, ...

 

 

Third, everything I'm currently reading was written post-2000.  That's probably a good thing where the journals are concerned.  After all, they're meant to be the latest and best scholarship.  But it occurs to me that I should add some more 'classic' writing to the mix too.

 

What are you reading at the moment? And why?  Share your thoughts in the

comments, or write your own blogpost and link back to it so we can share ideas!

 

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(1) Ron Horrigan, ‘The battle of Romani’, Euroa Gazette, 24 April 2012, p. 2.

 

(2) David Platt, 'Tolkien: conservative advocate', Australian Financial Review, 25 January 2013, p. 3 (Review section).