No arguments from here...

I don't think I am alone in saying that events on the world wide stage have made me anxious and a little fearful over the last few weeks/months/years.  And often confused.  

And everywhere I look I see shouting.  Politicians, media ...

I have always loved Neil Gaiman's fiction.  However it is his non-fiction writing which elevates him to hero status in my eyes.  His latest release is non-fiction, 'The View from the Cheap Seats'.  Some selected quotes from Credo, one of the articles in that book, follow:

'I believe that it is impossible to kill an idea because ideas are invisible and contagious, and they move fast...' 

 'I do not believe that burning, murdering, exploding people, smashing their heads with rocks (to let the bad ideas out), drowning them or even defeating them will work to contain ideas you do not like.  Ideas spring up where you do not expect them, like weeds, and are as difficult to control'...

'....I do not have the right to kill you, maim you, hurt you or take away your liberty or property because I find your ideas threatening or insulting or downright disgusting.  You probably think some of my ideas are pretty vile too...'

 'I believe that in the battle between guns and ideas, ideas will, eventually, win. '

 I hope he is right on that point in particular.  I so hope he is right. 

The lovely dinahmow also sent me this quote, also by Gaiman. 

'What I tend to see happening more and more is people retreating into their own corners. People seem scared to get things wrong or be shouted at so they form villages in which they agree with every other member, and maybe they go out and shout at the people in the next village for fun, but there’s no interchange of ideas going on. I think we have to encourage the idea that you’re allowed to think things. I have thought a great many stupid things over the years, and I can tell you that there’s not one stupid thing that I ever thought where I changed my mind because someone shouted at me or threatened to kill me. On the other hand, having great discussions with good friends, possibly over a drink, has definitely changed my mind and made me try to do better. You’re allowed to do better, but we have to let people do better '

The View from the Cheap Seats is a long book, but most of the articles in it are short.  I will be savouring it for some time to come.  I will probably agree with him most of the time, but I am confident that I don't agree with him I need have no fear that he will send someone round to sort me out...

Best Reads 2015

I am joining John Wiswell from The Bathroom Monologues in a blog hop about our favourite reads of 2015.  Not necessarily published in 2015, just books we first read this year which for one reason or another we loved.

Regular visitors here will know that I read a lot.  And, as my side-bar will attest, I read quite a wide variety of things.  Some of the books I have read this year have been gems which will stay in my head and heart.  Others?  Suffice it to say they went to the recycle bin.

I read for entertainment, to educate myself, for distraction, to escape and for comfort.  And there is probably a book for any occasion lurking somewhere in this house.  Which doesn't stop me succumbing to temptation and getting more.

I find it hard to define a 'best book'.  One I will reread?  One I read for fun/escape and thoroughly enjoyed?  One I learnt from?  I suspect all of those definitions work for me.  Some of my best books for the year are 'literature' and some are not.  And I don't give a rat's fundament. 

In no particular order some of my best reads for the year are listed below. If I have already blogged about a book it isn't featured again.  Clicking on the photos will embiggen them, and give you more detail about the titles and authors.

Barbara Kingsolver is an author whose work I read and reread.  Fiction or non-fiction, it doesn't matter, though PoisonWood Bible, which is perhaps her best known work, is not one of my favourites.  Somehow this one, first published in 1991, had escaped me until last year.  Yet again, it is a rich and textured examination of the difficulties (and the joys) of familial relationships.

Beatrix Potter was a big part of my childhood and I am obsessed with gardens.  Unsurprisingly when the skinny one saw this he snatched it up for me.  Marta McDowell explored Beatrix Potter's development as a gardener, and mapped a year in her gardens, showing what she was growing.  Lots of the plants she grew are now considered 'old-fashioned' and grow in my garden.  Beatrix Potter was interested in plants as a child, drew them skilfully (and they often feature in her books) and in adult life could probably be described as an obsessional gardener.  A woman after my own heart. 

Neil Gaiman is another author I regularly turn to.  An incredibly varied author.  Bizarre, complicated, dark, hilarious - and often in the same piece of work.  His voice is just so varied...
Anansi Boys was, mostly, fun though it had its dark moments.  What do you do if you discover that your father (who you are estranged from) was Anansi the trickster spider god.  And, with his death your life is going to change.  Dramatically. 
It is also a story about love.  And perhaps a subtle warning to think twice before killing spiders...

And for something completely different, a snippet from Gaiman's Fragile Things, a collection of short stories I am reading at the moment.
This paragraph opens a story called Bitter Grounds.

'In every way that counted, I was dead.  Inside somewhere maybe I was screaming and weeping and howling like an animal, but that was another person deep inside, another person who had no access to the face and lips and mouth and head, so on the surface I just shrugged and smiled and kept moving.  If I could have physically passed away, just let it all go, like that, without doing anything, stepped out of life as easily as walking through a door, I would have done.  But I was going to sleep at night and waking in the morning, disappointed to be there and resigned to existence.'

 I can't think of a more powerful expression of the desolation of loss.  Mind you, the story turns in totally unexpected directions after that opening...

Jeffrey Brown's drawings perfectly capture the supple beauty and charm of cats.  And yes, I am a cat lover.  He also captures some of their less endearing foibles with equal skill, as the drawing below clearly illustrates.  My much loved moggies spread the kitty litter considerable distances.  Drat them.

The final book I am featuring as a best read wasn't an 'easy read', but was fascinating.  Lenoard Shlain took us on a tour of Leonardo da Vinci's incredible life of creativity, artistry and inventiveness using a multi-disciplinary approach including history, art, neuroscience and psychology.  Most of us are predominantly left or right brain thinkers.  If Shlain was right, which I believe he was, da Vinci was equally comfortable with either side of his brain, and used both to his, and our, benefit.  

Sadly, and more than a little ironically, Shlain died from brain cancer just as he finished this book.

Come and visit John, and see what have delighted him and the other participants.  And be tempted.  As I will.