In Readiness

Ramadhan 27 1429

A few hours today were spent cleaning the books here, as part of the general cleaning operation prior to Hari Raya. It's rare, and tiring, for me to do them all in a day, but that's what I did. The operation has left me, as it usually does, a touch melancholy: the climate continues to wreak slow havoc on a fair number of the collection; and I wonder if I'm likely to catch up on all the reading I need to do just to do some kind of justice to what I possess even in the next five years.

I also found time to finish Post Captain, which left me quite the opposite of melancholy, if there is such a state. It occurred to me that Jack and Stephen share an openness to experience, a sheer delight in the world, that helps explain their friendship. This is not to say that they are immune to other states - both suffer convincing bouts of depression in the course of the novel - but it's as if they know that their friendship orients them towards an essential sanity manifest in their music and shared humour. And isn't it extraordinary that O'Brian creates a convincing sense of heroism without avoiding the grim, sometimes despairingly harsh details of naval life in the early nineteenth century?

I'm now deciding what novel to read next, bearing in mind I've still got the Alan Bennett book going, most pleasingly so. I was thinking of rereading one of the books my EE students are doing - A Clockwork Orange, Sexing The Cherry, The Blind Assassin (though I haven't yet picked up a copy of the last of these) - but I just fancy something totally new. It's probably going to be John Banville's The Sea since I know absolutely nothing about this one and it's pretty short so I'm not likely to get bogged down and regret it.