Books, Books, Books

These are just some of the books I've acquired over the last couple of weeks - it's getting late, I have an early start tomorrow, and suddenly the task of trying to herd them all into one place felt like to big a job. These are the ones that formed a pile that finally toppled over in my bedroom, almost blocking the doorway, and constituting a definite health and safety risk. It wasn't the only pile in there, it was just the one that fell over. I feel like the books are getting a bit out of hand at the moment. Everywhere I look at home there are stacks of them and I want to read so many of them now (damn having to waste all that time working for a living). Happily I'm off this weekend so hopefully I'll manage to have a decent tidy up, resist buying any more books, and actually read a couple.

The small collection of John Suthertland's books in the middle deserve special mention. I have a definite thing for his books (for want of a better description he's my literary crush) but because they're the sort of thing that I dip in and out of they're seldom the books I write about here - which is an omission because they're brilliant. 'Love, Sex, Death & Words' is a collection of literary anecdotes tied to the days of the year and is compulsive reading (not to be read before bed because it's very hard to stop in time to get enough sleep). 'A Little History of Literature' was a Christmas present and is a series of essays, it is also a particularly beautiful book complete with charming woodcut illustrations (at least they look like wood or lino cuts - whatever they are they're very pleasing). I've only read a few so far but they're fascinating. The last one, and my most recent purchase is 'Curiosities of Literature' it's very funny and is, I think, best described as a series thoughts and speculations based on a lifetime spent in literature. It makes me laugh and want to read just about everything which I find very endearing in a book.