Books Under The Bed ­ Blog ­ Susan Steggall

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Books Under The Bed

As I said in my last blog, reading challenges of all stripes and colours are quite the rage these days.

Last week (before surgery), while scrabbling on the floor under the bed, looking for the pencil I’d dropped (I always have paper and pencil handy to jot notes from books, ‘must not forget’ email to send and phone calls to make on the morrow) I found – or perhaps re-found – two dusty piles of books. The dust on the back pile was a reddish colour, from blankets not used for years, which shows the age of that pile! Scrubbing off th dust I discovered books completely forgotten – in English and French. Book that spoke of other years, events and places, of when my mother was alive and grandchildren were babies. Some were more recent, just carelessly pushed under and forgotten.

An idea… I said to myself. An adventure. I’m going to work through that pile. Do my own reading challenge, working through the many books I own that I haven't read, many of them 'books under the bed'. 

I'm starting with Michelle de Kretser's Questions of Travel, which will fill two functions: lower the pile under the bed by a good four centimetres and fulfill another mid year new year's ambition to review books by Australian women writers.

I bought de Kretser's book months ago, having immensely enjoyed her novel, The Lost Dog. Although 'travel' is something I do quite a lot of and am interested in on many levels, I simply couldn't 'get into' Questions of Travel. Perhaps the time wasn't right; i hope now it is.

 

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