KW-32 Three Books

and a cabbage

I seem to be reading three books at the same time this week. This is not a thing that I often do, but it has lead me to a startling realisation about why I have so many damn books. It is partly because I left the barracks at least twice this week and mostly because I am forgetful. Or disorganised.

These lettuces, going rampantly to seed, are probably 5th generation Barracks lettuce. Every year, I let a few of them mature in the greenhouse. They drop their seeds, and next year, I’ll have hundreds of the earliest lettuces you can imagine they get transplanted out into the main beds, and a few stay in the polytunnel for next year.

It’s easy to read lots. You just need to have a book with you at all times. The alternative is scrolling, and we all know there is nothing good about that. In those moments between things - waiting for a bus, in a queue, for that place to open, for an appointment - reach into your bag pull out a book, knock off a few pages.

What’s that? You have an hour to wait, and your forgot to bring one with you? Not a problem. There is always a book shop, a second hand store, one of those on-street library boxes somewhere nearby (always know where your nearest source of books is!). Go grab a quick one, and get into it.

This quickly improves the size of your library, but also, the randomness of it. If you are forced into acquiring a book through forgetfulness, you do sometimes find yourself with quite a range on the go at any one time.

As a result of which, I am currently reading: The Silo Trilogy by Hugh Howey, Ghost Stories by Siri Hustvedt and The Creative Act by Rick Rubin.

The first of these, the Silo Trilogy, was recommended to me by someone online. I was just about to say that it’s nice to read a book that is obviously going to be picked up by a streaming service before it gets picked up by a streaming service, then I noticed the Apple TV+ logo. on the front. Checked it out. Apparently, it’s currently number one at the streamer. Okay. I’m no where near the curve, let alone in front of it.

It’s a pretty good page turner. There are extended sequences of people walking down many, many flights of stairs which brought back terrible memories of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation which I did not like one bit, but it’s way less weird and mystical and boring, and there is no intelligent mind-control fungus which is a nice improvement. It does have that thing that all modern trilogies have though, where the author has apparently written three stories with three protagonists, mashed them up together and called it a trilogy. This seems to be a thing now. There is no reward for brevity in modern popular writing, but it’s fiiiine.¹

Ghost Stories by Siri Hustvedt. I loved the writing of both Siri Hustvedt and Paul Auster way before I knew that they were married. I came to them through a human who I cherished a great deal, and who will always take a up a little bit of that especially active part of my subconscious which exists to remind me of opportunities I squandered. She went on to have a life of great romance, tragedy and beauty to rival anything a mere author could invent.

This book starts in the moment after his death to cancer, Siri by his side. She said or this book, her memoir of their 43 years together, that it is the AND in “Siri and Paul”. I think that is the perfect way to consider a relationship - the conjunction that binds, separate and unifying in the middle of the two. My prediction - it’s going to wreck me good and proper.

On a much lighter note, the Creative Act by Rick Rubin.

Rick Rubin is, let’s say, eccentric. He founded Def Jam records, and if we were to call him a big cheese in the New York Hip Hop scene would be talking the scale of Switzerland’s entire output of Emmentaler. He’s a very big cheese. He also is the guy who persuaded The Man in Black, Johnny Cash, to do that album of cover songs right at the end of his life which gave the world (JC’s) version of Hurt.

The book is Rick’s take on what it means to be a creative person, which is to say a living person. Every act we perform is an artistic choice, and our flaws and imperfections are what makes our art worthwhile. It’s somewhere between The Little Prince and the Tao te Ching and it is endlessly fun and, I would say, discussion provoking. It’s not quite thought provoking, there is nothing to struggle with in here, but every little verse is definitely worth having an engaging and delightful chat about.

Also, it’s a beautifully tactile book. I love the textured hard back cover and the thick, soft pages. Actually, the Siri Hustvedt book is also very pleasant in the hand. It’s paperback, but feels rich and cloth-bound at the same time. Well done to all involved.

All of which is to say, there isn’t much of interest going down in the garden right now. Mowing, weeding, watering. I harvested the biggest cabbage of my growing life, and the beans are just starting to go wild. I’m chugging my way through handfuls of gooseberries every day, and I have just reminded myself that I said I was going to try drying them. Actually, maybe I said that in the other thing I am writing, which means I’m not really supposed to mention it here. Oops. Anyway. Off we go to the pigs!

Hope you have a wonderful week, and what are you reading this summer?

Much pirate love

Your loving Pirate Ben

xoxo

1. I guess they’re all trying to get an Apple Amazon Hulu contract?