on books: 'if one book wearies me I take up another'

concorde crashed. sabotage. the metal panels folded it up and it shot off to crash somewhere further east. horsemouth fell to the ground and attempted a 'duck and cover'. shrapnel and bits of metal fell near horsemouth cutting down power cables. horsemouth got up and made a run for home. the people were still out in the street market though and this slowed him down. 

earlier in the dream horsemouth had been trying to organise a film show in the park on sunday (such are horsemouth's dreams at 3am on a monday morning). 

horsemouth was reading montaigne's essay on books (a topic close to horsemouth's heart). 

montaigne's honesty is refreshing. 

'I may be a man of fairly wide reading, but I retain nothing.'

'if one book wearies me I take up another.' and earlier,

'if  I come across difficult passages in my reading... after making a charge or two I let them be.'

for plain delight  montaigne favours the decameron and rabelais, he has fallen out of love with ovid and ariosto, though virgil and terence meet with approval. 

for authors useful to montaigne's own project he favours plutarch and seneca (who he finds in agreement) over cicero ('to tell the truth boldly... his style of writing seems boring to me'). he favours the historians (and particularly those who held high office and knew the actual affairs of state).

montaigne is a follower of the modern cultural studies style of annotating books the better to understand them as he reads them. (he tells us this in passing)

'I have more than once happened to pick up again, thinking it new and unknown to me, a book which I had carefully read several years earlier and scribbled all over with my notes.'

he may even write a short summary of the text (containing his opinion of what it reveals about the author) at the end of a book to remind himself of it when he comes back to it. 

yesterday whilst out wandering with his mother a sad discovery. earlier an evasion round the common (horsemouth was not in the mood to chat).  

online in the evening horsemouth re-listened to musicians of bremen volume four. 

the first time back listening to it in a while. howard listens to am I born to die  a lot, but horsemouth does not, he does not like his own vocal on it and he does not feel it works well with the rest of the album (plus current 93 got there before him). ah well - too late to fix it now. 

otherwise a ghost story and some book porn (best russian books of 2021) and some book shop porn (hurlingham books in fulham and skoob). the second halcyon exists (john has been there) but it is not the magical cave that halcyon was (ah well). oxfam st. james' street walthamstow is good, the salvation army near the william morris museum yields the occasional beauty. of late horsemouth has taken advantage of the neighbourhood enthusiasm for putting out books once read and for 'book boxes'. 

horsemouth will soon be potlatching his own books (the better to get mobile) if anyone is interested. 

today (no doubt) more of the same. 

blog breakfast news walk tea one o'clock news desultory faffing another walk faff dinner read/watch/listen shower sleep (perchance to dream) and repeat.