A passion for reading – my favorite pastime.

Bookshelves in our living room

Ever since I was small my favorite pastime has been reading – I have a real passion for it.

Here in Eleuthera both Bob and I – also an avid reader – often spend the evening reading – so it is always a delight for me when a shipment comes in and has a few new volumes to sit on the pile of books waiting to be read.

Our house has built in bookshelves in the hallway, in the living room, in the bedroom as well as overspill in the rental houses. To me a house is not a home until it has bookshelves filled with books…..

Bookshelves in our living room
Bookshelves in our living room

Each of our rental houses at Governors Estate has a copy of the book Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck – I first read this book while having what was shaping up to be a disastrous holiday in France – but I read Steinbeck’s words of wisdom about every trip having it’s own volition and to learn to enjoy what was actually happening rather than getting angry because things were not going according to my own plan. I learned to open up to who I was meeting – the car repair man and his family ! – and where I actually was rather than where I thought I should have been and you what – it was wonderful !

Travels with Charley
Travels with Charley

My passion is not just the reading – it is also the books themselves. I don’t have a Kindle or download books on to my iPad – I love to have the book in my hand and on my shelf.

So recently I have been reading ‘The Mockingbird Next Door” – a work of non-fiction by Marja Mills who went to live next door to Harper Lee – the writer of one of my favorite books of all time – To Kill a Mockingbird.  Mills moved in next door to the Lee sisters and the book is an account of the friendship that developed – and of the tales of life in the Deep South during the last century.

It has made me put To Kill a Mockingbird onto the bedside table pile of books to be read again. I never understand people who don’t like to re-read books – if it is a good book I gallop through it – absorbing the story first and then I go back later to re-read it and relish a lot of the nuances and language that I missed the first time around.

The one book I re-read again immediately was Steinbeck’s East of Eden. Bob had told me for YEARS that I must read this book – and if there is one thing that puts me off it is being told I MUST read something – or watch something ! – so eventually I got over this and absolutely devoured the book – sensational – but I knew that I had missed so much of the joy of Steinbeck’s writing so back to the beginning ….

A couple of months ago I read Wind From the Carolinas by Robert Wilder. Personally I found it a bit of a potboiler saga but what was very interesting was the historical context of the Bahamas where the book is set.  It highlights the economic ups and downs of the Islands and that direct relationship to events happening in the rest of the world – the War of American Independence, the abolition of slavery, the American Civil war, and on to the bootlegging era. I am pretty sure that anyone here in Eleuthera would find a copy at the wonderful Haynes Library.

Out Island Doctor
Out Island Doctor

Also set in the Bahamas is the great little book called The Out Island Doctor by Evans Cottman. It is the story of a man who became a medical doctor after the Second World War and these are his hair-raising adventures in the Out Islands. Again I’m sure the Haynes Library has a copy of this – if not it is – like all the books I have mentioned available from Amazon.

The last book I am going to mention – not ever ! – is Daughter of Empire written by Lady Pamela Hicks – the mother of the lovely India Hicks who of course lives up in Harbour Island. Incidentally India writes a terrific blog – it is pretty much the only one I follow regularly. She writes with great wit and humor – I will never forget her saying what a waste it would be if the plane she was on crashed as she had just had her legs waxed !!!

Anyway – back to the book. It is the memoir of Lady Pamela – daughter of Lord Mountbatten and it is a fascinating read – I highly recommend it …….

And more books !
And more books !

 

 

 

2 thoughts on “A passion for reading – my favorite pastime.”

  1. Well! No wonder I like you…me being a librarian. You are both voracious literary dilettantes. I can just sit back and enjoy reading your profound and entertaining blog about books among other topics. Who enjoys your blog? Me for sure. Thanks. I just retrieved from the attic mom’s first edition of Gone with the Wind – a copy that I saw on our book shelves while I was a child – along with dad’s copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. James Cooney’s Phoenix Press first published Miller’s short stories and many other avant guard author’s works of the early and mid-twentieth century. Their archives reside in both the Smith and Harvard College library archives. The Cooney’s (both deceased – he an Irish Bohemian & Blanche, his wife and my close colleague, the Jewish daughter of a member of Murder Incorporated (NYC) lived nearby in Whately, MA. Gosh, I should do my own blog! Your book accumulation is impressive. It is akin to my piles of open readings hither and yon throughout the living room tables and floor! Yegads.

    I LUV Hicks’s blog too! Your recounting India saying “what a waste it would be if the plane she was on crashed as she had just had her legs waxed” reminds me of Joan Rivers’ humor – yes? India swears in her blog – you don’t. Anyway, I have been helping my 25 year-old second cousin renovate and refurbish his new condo. His tastes are modern and he is helping himself to my Marimekko print and sundry “modern/contemporary” accoutrements of my former life during – you won’t believe this – my high school and after college years. I enjoy buying for people and making them happy with a “this is just perfect” response. I will look about on One Kings Lane…

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Kathy Colman

Writer, Interior Designer, Foodie, and Wife to Bob. Living in Eleuthera, Bahamas

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