Snuggling up

This morning I got up early – quarter to 5. I was feeling, this morning, as close to ‘normal’ as I had felt for the last 3 years. Or, maybe, the last four and a half years since my grandchildren moved back to New Zealand. I sat outside and listened to the aggressive traffic noises from route 94, M1 and M6 which all circumnavigate where I live. I listened to the hundreds of birds which had woken up, like me, and sat in their trees and sang, some wonderful and others simply noisy.  I thought about my mum and dad, and how they had raised me. And I thought about books.

Dad used to read paperback or hard covers. I remembered the shelves of books in Tawa Street, most of which were packed into hallway cupboards when we moved to Normandy Ave. Dad used to read a lot of western novels, including Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour, and any Reader’s Digest condensed books. Mum used to read to me and my siblings, but my dad and my Poppa were the people who got me into books.

I read Enid Blyton, and fell in love firstly with The Children of the Cherry Farm and on to The Magic Faraway Tree and The Enchanted Wood. My sister and I would share the Famous Five books – there were 21 of them! Our Gran would buy them for us. Poppa used to give each of us books for our birthdays or Christmas. The only one I really remember was Laddie by Gene Stratton-Porter, first published in 1913 and the latest publication given to me sometime in the 1960s. Stratton-Porter is a woman, and wrote 22 books including nature books, columns in her local magazines and her own poetry.

At high school I spent a lot of time in the library, and the one I read which stuck in my mind was The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw. This told a story of personal relationships between three enemies in WW2 and a movie was made of it in 1958, starring Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and Dean Martin. I’ve never seen that movie… perhaps I should.

In the coming years I snuggled up with Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, Stephen Donaldson’s The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, David Eddings’ five-book The Belgariad, the ongoing series of Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern and moved on to novels by writers like Nelson deMille, Wilbur Smith, Bryce Courtenay, Leon Uris and Alistair MacLean. I began to collect books which I still have, including the trilogy of J R Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings. I moved to non-fiction novels, many which still sit on my shelf. My home is the home for The Holocaust: the Jewish Tragedy by Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies by Martin Gilbert, Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally, The Exodus Enigma by Ian Wilson and David and Goliath: the Bain family murders by Joe Karam. I look through many of them occasionally. They mean something to me.

Children’s authors intrigued me, and I saved a biography about Maurice Sendak called The Art of Maurice Sendak, published in 1980. It included tales and artwork about many of the Sendak children’s books I had purchased for my own children.

In that same shelf is a large book, Jerusalem: Song of Songs written by Jill and Leon Uris – for many years I had dreamed about going there. Still haven’t. I was also into nature, and Wade Doak’s Dolphin Dolphin is there too.

When I moved over here I couldn’t bring all my books, so boxes in mum and dad’s Normandy Ave were full with old books. I have no idea what happened to them after mum died. I just wish I’d brought Laddie with me.

Listening to music my whole life was also important to me. Recently - a few years ago - I bought some books which gave history of some groups I had spent my youth with, including Rolling Stones, U2 and, still my absolute favourite, Pink Floyd.  Actually, I’ve only got three or four books about Pink Floyd… maybe I should buy more.

Many years ago I had been involved in protests, even while I was at school (the first one was a march against the VietNam war). I said, in the intro on this blog, that four and a half years ago my grandchildren moved back to New Zealand. I went into depression over the next few months, and I wrote my first website, www.itsokaytobeangry.com, and got involved in the latest protests which meant a lot to me, including climate change, mining, animal welfare, LGBT and violence against women and families. My books now reflect what I have read about any of this sort of thing, including the Griffith Review #40 Women & Power edited by Julianne Schultz, Destroying the Joint edited by Jane Caro, The Stalking of Julia Gillard by Kerry-Anne Walsh, Climate Change: Turning up the heat by A. Barrie Pittock and Marley & Me, a story about “life and love with the world’s worst dog” by John Grogan, and very few fictions such as The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood even though she’s an environmentalist. My shelf still contains non-fictions which I bought when I was studying for my Grad Dip WHS – perhaps I should read them again… or occasionally… they’ll still be there.

There’s only one case of shelves and around 200 books on it now. Back in 2013 I had to separate my marriage property, so I had sold one set of book shelves and got rid of many books which, if I could remember them, I don’t think they were so important to me as what’s now on my shelf – including my first novel, First Person Singular. I’ve been to the Red Cross book sale at BCEC for the last three or four years, book events at Avid Reader book shop in West End, bought books online, bought them in malls. I know that, as I can afford to, in the future I will still be buying books.

This morning I was feeling as close to ‘normal’ as I had felt for the last 3 years. That’s a great feeling: normality… and my memory. Now, back to reading…