The Future of the Blog: Book Recs

 

I never tell you about what I’m reading, right?  Or almost never.  This is not, in fact, because I throw everything across the room.  I am a cow, but I am a cow who loves reading, and there are books that Pollyanna would let me talk about.  No, the problem is that writing  B o o k   R e v i e w s  freaks me out because I’m sure I’ll do it wrong.*  So I don’t do it.  So I read a great book and . . . I don’t tell you about it.  I pull down an old favourite and reread it and love it all over again, and I don’t tell you about that either.

Bad.

So, when I was thinking about the Future of the Blog and my wish for placeholder posts on nights I need off for one reason or another** I thought, I know!  BOOK RECS!  Not reviews.  Just . . . here’s a nice book.  I liked it.  You might too.

However, being the hellgoddess, which means cranky and perverse, as soon as this brilliant notion flashed into my consciousness I knew I wanted to start this new tradition not with a fabulous fantasy novel*** but with an example of the peculiar nonfiction I spend most of my time reading.

I’d seen references to CHURCH BELLS AND BELL-RINGING, A NORFOLK PROFILE by Paul Cattermole, knew it was ‘destined to be a classic’ as the foreword says, and knew there was a new edition coming out.  I’m geeky enough to think it sounded interesting, but not right before Christmas when I’m running out of money anyway and should buy a few Christmas presents†.

And then . . . fancy . . . I received an email from the sales and marketing director of the academic firm who’s publishing it offering me a comp copy.  After I finished laughing—and I did try to warn the nice man that, supposing that I feel it lives up to its reputation, my puffing it on my blog will not result in a run on sales—I said yes please, I’d love one.

The thing is . . . it’s frelling fascinating.  It really is.  Here’s the link:

http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=14074

It’s hard for me to judge because I am a bell ringer, and I like knowing how things work, and how they’ve come to work the way they do.  But it seems to me that anyone with an interest in cranky history—particularly cranky English history—might well find this fascinating too.  Note also that I am a flibbertigibbet dilettante and pretty well incapable of beating myself through text I find dry and graceless, even if it’s the only book or article or clay tablet on a subject I urgently want to know more about.  This is, ahem, surprisingly well written and equally surprisingly moves right along, bringing great swathes of archaeology, sociology, heraldry and bell-casting with it, and is stuffed with (black and white) photos and diagrams.

It’s just way cool.  And good cranky nonfiction is worthwhile twice:  imagine taking CHURCH BELLS AND BELL-RINGING to the café because you want to read it . . .  and watching people’s faces when you prop it up against the sugar-bowl and they see the title. . . .

* * *

* What if I praise the wrong character, the wrong plot development, the wrong turn of phrase?  What if I look COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY CLUELESS?  I spend a lot of my life looking pretty nearly utterly clueless^ and mostly I’m resigned but I have some faint professional vanity that resists being publicly clueless about other people’s books.

^ See:  Bell ringing.  Singing.  Knitting.  Quantum Physics.  Japanese.

** Tonight, for example, when you’d think I’d have LOTS of time, having SENT SHADOWS IN TO MY EDITOR THIS AFTERNOON . . . you’d be wrong.  Because I also had a cup of tea with my curate, who sent me home with an armful of books on Zen Christianity and the Christian contemplative tradition—there’s a lot more of the latter than I realised—and I want to go to bed^ and read.

^ I don’t read other people’s books in the bath.  Just in case.

*** I promise there are a few of these in the queue.

† for other people