100 Per Cent Proof: A Reading Diary

Current read: The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane
Where / how acquired: Xmas present from my wife
Vibe: Quietly radical

I’ve been waiting to start this book since Xmas day – and it doesn’t disappoint: just the sort of meandering intellectual mixture of travelogue and history / geology / ecology and probably countless other areas that I haven’t reached yet that I like. That the author lives in Cambridge I appreciate too, as I do the fact that the below-mentioned Roger Deakin gets a few walk-on (or hike-on, maybe) cameos.

I sympathise strongly with the author’s deep-felt attachment to all things natural and wild but I also like that he’s not too holier-than-thou about it – he likes warm soft beds and nights in watching the telly too.

I couldn’t get into the book first of all though but I realised afterwards that that was part of where I was trying to read it – on a busy bus I think. And that made me muse upon where’s best to read what sort of books (and where it isn’t right). I can remember reading particular books in particular places and my memories of both the book and the time are inextricably linked. When I was in Prague on a holiday quite a few years ago now I was reading Gunter Grass’ My Century, his collection of 100 interlinked short stories, one for every year of the 20th century, and I especially remember reading it sitting next to the huge metronome that gently ticks away in a park above the city, installed in Prague by the Soviets. Where more suitably in the heart of tumultuous Europe could you read Grass’ book, its narratives personal and yet deeply political, the politics being those of battle-scarred central Europe? Andrew Hussey’s Paris was my literary companion throughout the south-of-France stay part of our honeymoon last year, before we later stayed in that brilliant city itself – the perfect combination. Reading The Wild Places in a pretty raucous east London pub this Saturday night strangely seemed to fit, although much more pleasing was continuing the read at Brick Lane’s Hookah Lounge over their generic beers and very un-generic teas and cocktails. Trains suit reading, buses and cars don’t. What to drink? Fine ales and beers are probably my preferred reading tipple, but then I’ve very fond memories of Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs washed down with some excellent whisky in a pub in Northumberland in the dead of winter too … drinking booze and reading are the best of friends in general, of course. Beer for non-fiction and wine for fiction? No, that’s silly…

The weather just teasingly showing some pre-springtime sunshine has inspired more extra reading of a favourite genre of books – maps, wherein I can plan bike rides for when it’s a bit more clement. Robert Macfarlane’s book purports to be a map, of those places that on regular maps are just white or pretty-much unmarked space. Maps are dead good reads so he has a lot of live up to…