Better late than never, I suppose. I thought I would post a round-up of my last month’s reading at the beginning of each new month, but here it is, and March is two thirds of the way through. Am I the only person who finds time has sped up? I think it must be my age. A year was forever when I was a kid.
So: in February, I read Café Scheherezade by Arnold Zable, Old Filth by Jane Gardham, The Rosemary Tree by Elizabeth Goudge, Real Tigers, Spook Street and Slow Horses by Mick Herron, Tracks by Robyn Davidson and The Growing Summer by Noel Streatfeild.
They were all terrific! But I found I had copied these paragraphs from Cafe Sheherezade in a notebook, so I suppose it might be the one that has stayed with me the most.
‘…I would detour to a city garden. I would sit down on a park bench and observe a single leaf, covered in dew. Gradually a droplet would form. I would watch it slide on the leaf’s veins. For a moment it would balance, on the edge. I would be willing it to hang on, to remain poised, fixed in time. But slowly it would slip over, and fall. And I would say, “Ah, Now I can go to work.”
‘This is what my wanderings have taught me; that the moment itself is the haven, the true sanctuary. If only we could hold on to that. And savour it. Perhaps then we would not be so inclined to tear each other to pieces.’
