Books, Books And More Books

[poliphilo]

Ailz is doing a couple of courses. One about being a Quaker and one about being a Doulah (sp?). This brings books into the house- and space has to be made for the books- preferably on a shelf that's handy for her. The best shelves for purpose are the ones in the bureau she's using as her work space- so that's where they've gone, displacing (gasp!) T.S. Eliot and Tolkien.

Tolkien and Eliot are now upstairs with me- in the cupboard to the right of my desk, keeping company with Yeats and Villon and Sarah Waters and most of our art books.

More books are coming to hand because of my current hunger for detective stories. Most of these go to charity once they're read but I'm keeping the Simenons. They belong to a rather handsome set of the Maigret novels, freshly translated and published by Penguin. I like collecting things and I've decided I want to own the lot- all 75 of them- but not by shopping online because that wouldn't be nearly as much fun as hunting them down pre-owned in real world shops.

Incidentally, Simenon is the best.

Comments

[lauradi7dw]

I read "Maigret et les braves gens" (1962) in French, in a French class, in about 1975, I guess. Presumably I missed some stuff by having to constantly look up words while reading, but my impression at the time was that Simenon was cheating, not giving the readers all the necessary information. Hmm. Now that I have straightforwardly put it that way, I can see that possibly S was not at fault. No way to know because I was indignant and never read another one, even in translation. Hmm.

[poliphilo]

He wrote hundreds of books- literally- and they're obviously going to be of varying quality. I think he's just a very good writer; he understands people and has a great feeling for places and their atmosphere- and everything is put across with such economy and lightness of touch.