This just a visual retirement blog on the assumption that the titles are self-explanatory. As the title suggests these are a selection of those books that helped me cope with my restricted life style in lockdown. Just forget for a moment what I said about enjoying it. Just a brief note on each one.
There’s the usual helping, for me at least, of crime fiction. Nobody finer for escapist intrigue than Agatha Christie. Just a couple (below) of the very large number of her books I possess.
And to balance my revisiting of my crime reading history, after the very British Agatha, American author, Raymond Chandler. It’s debatable whether Agatha or Raymond came first when I discovered the delights of this genre. Either way if I want a bit of nostalgia both of these two authors would need to be in there.
Jumping about a bit into a different format of escapism, steam trains. Again I’ve plenty of choice but this one, on lost Scottish railways, just happened to be out on the table, so as a good a basis for the choice as any I thought.
If ever you needed a large book to keep you going through a lockdown no matter how long it goes on for. Forget I said that, but you have to admit that Hilary Mantel takes some getting through. It’s not just its length but its complexity and the huge number of characters means you have to keep reading the list of characters at the front and also the plot itself. I’ve had to dip into this book rather than tackling it all in one go. If the virus didn’t wipe you out, over-reading Hilary most certainly will.
And talking of dipping in. Back to another of my favourite genres, ghost stories. This one reminds me of the Irish holiday we’ve missed this year because I bought it at The Blasket Island museum, the one I mentioned a few retirement blogs back. Nothing like rounding off the day reading a ghost story in bed. I’ll just recommend my version of ghostly short stories, most of which are in the above section under the That Which Lies Beneath section. Or very buyable for not much money as an Amazon Ebooks.
And while I’m promoting my own books let me just mention en passant, my latest epistle, The Vineyard Years. Given I’ve only just received my copies of the book it’s been fun to read back over our own adventures of the last few years. Whatever gets you through the night as somebody once said.
And then a book I actually purchased specifically to help me through this period. The one here is simply interior design porn. Marvelous, and completely unachievable, English country house interiors. Unrealistic, and all the nicer for that.
But when I needed realism with an exotic touch I had my Dutch designer, Gerrit Rietveld furniture book. Made two chairs from it so far and described one in a recent blog. It’s a book to lose yourself in physical activity-wise.
So finally, and in a similar vein but very much at the opposite end of the scale, my two books on sheds. One more about building them and the other a book full of photos that make a shed lover like me, weak at the knees. Just wait til we get out of this, I’ll be creating another shed to go with the ones I already have. As I’ve said before, a man, or woman, can never have too many sheds and at times like this, any fantasising that gets you through, is OK. The usual rules no longer apply.
PS. there are plenty more I could have chosen.
