Somewhat late for the deadline this month, but really, who's counting?
The Dark is Rising series - Susan Cooper
Technically five books, Over Sea, Under Stone; The Dark Is Rising; Greenwitch; The Grey King and Silver on the Tree. More books that I haven't read for a long time, although despite being children's books I don't think I read them as a child. I think perhaps my mid-twenties? And, as with so many of the other books I'm re-visiting I remembered almost nothing from them. One character had stuck in my mind, but only one. And one location. Nice to be absorbed in a good fantasy with just enough peril but not too much.
Espedair Street - Iain Banks
Mostly I'd remembered enjoying the non-sci-fi Iain Banks books and yet found this one surprisingly joyless. I didn't really like any of the characters, I wasn't particularly interested in what became of them, and it all left me feeling rather flat. I had been planning to re-read some more Iain Banks, but now I'm not sure. Perhaps this will be an opportunity to purge the shelves of something I don't really enjoy? Or perhaps it depends upon my mood and I should give another one a go some other time.
An Aside...
Why, you might ask, would I think my mood is having such an impact on my reading? Well, since the schools re-opened and LittleBear finished with home-learning and went back to the classroom, his sleep patterns have gone out of the window. He struggles to get to sleep. He struggles to stay asleep. The only source of comfort and reassurance is Mummy-cuddles. And heart-warming though it is that my presence is enough to lull my poppet to sleep, I do not function well on broken sleep.
Most nights LittleBear now spends in a bed with me, because I simply stopped being able to operate as a vaguely normal human being when spending an hour or more every night trying to reassure him enough to go back to sleep in his own bed. And now, sleeping with Mummy is a habit that he is either unwilling or unable to break. Meanwhile I feel broken. It currently feels as though parenthood is a choice between my child's well-being and my own, with no path that allows for both. Naturally this isn't actually true, as it's only my own psyche that is telling me that the world judges me for my nine-year-old son needing me with him to sleep. But my own psyche is a harsh mistress, and spends a lot of her time telling me I'm a failure, a bad mother, incompetent and a whole host of other negative things. The kind of things I would never dream of thinking, let alone saying, about a friend, but with which I allow my psyche to berate me.
So, with my own mental health seemingly spiralling deeper into the mire of self-flagellation, I am finding that it is only by reading lightweight fluff, or looking at pictures of cats on the internet that I am able to find a semblance of inner calm. I don't need angst, or betrayal, rage or recriminations. I need comfort. Which leads me on to the next wave of books that I am compulsively consuming...
Artemis Fowl; Artemis Fowl and the Arctic Incident; Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code - Eoin Colfer
I treated myself to the entire set of Artemis Fowl books, having read the first 4 when they were published. They're fun, silly, entertaining, and just what my battered psyche needs. The peril is not too perilous, there are fart jokes and fairies. What more could I ask for?
Many thanks, this helps!
ReplyDelete(My seven-year-old also need at least one parent at night.)