September 2025 Reading. Scheduling my TBR stack

 

The plan has been a while in the making.  It is to address my ToBeRead (TBR) stack which gets bigger by the week.  Have you a similar pile? You know, the one that sits on a shelf or at the side of your bed. Yes that one! You pass a bookshop and something new catches your eye. Okay then, let's get that.  Or you've been to a book launch, met the author and because it was a free event (maybe with a glass of wine) you felt it was just downright rude not to buy a copy of their latest. Don't even think of the book programmes on TV and Radio when listening in inevitably leads to another purchase.

So yes, I welcome all those opportunities for the new but feel the need to balance the flow and make room for them.  The way I'm doing that is through a reading planner. I'll share this on another post but essentially I have created a specific calendar on my phone to schedule a month's reading in advance.

What's the saying? Those who fail to plan are planning to fail. 

Some of the books I list in this post have, not for the first time, made it to the top of the pile but by sharing my intention to read them this month I hold myself accountable and trust that any readers who happen upon this post will call me out if I don't meet the challenge. 

So here's the plan for the six books I'm going to read this September:

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig.  It's our Library Reading Group's assigned read. We meet to discuss on the last Thursday of each month. So that's a pre-fixed, no fail deadline.

44 Poems On Being with Each Other from Pádraig ÓTuama.  I've already dipped into this one as I finished his collection of Kitchen Hymns which I loved.  I had the pleasure of meeting Pádraig back in February when he shared his poems with us at Belfast's Crescent Arts Centre. And I listen in regularly to his podcast, Poetry Unbound from the OnBeing Studios. Do check it out! Worth a listen.

Les Kangourous by Dominique Barbéris. I'm a keen Francophile and run another blog over at francofiled.org - come say bonjour ! - And so as to keep up my French I read texts in the language. These days it's getting harder and I have to stop reading to look up meanings, references and definitions. I confess that I usually use an e-reader. Not only do I get an instant translation with a touch or two but I can also highlight and add new words to my vocabulary builder.  This book though is a hard copy, paper version. I love the scent and feel of paper. I've read another book by Dominique Barbéris - A Sunday in Ville d'Avray which I adored. It boasts a bookplate signed by the author. I was so taken with it that I also bought a hard copy in the original French. Looking forward to this one.

Two Summers by Glenn Patterson. Glenn is a regular contributor to local book readings and launches. I read his Where are we Now? a while back and enjoyed it immensely. He tells a good story. I'm interested in the structure of this one as apparently it's two good stories in one book.  The blurb promises: Two boys, two cities and two summers.  Another attraction was the endorsements from Wendy Erskine, Roddy Doyle and Will Self. Better crack on with it then. Actually it's first on the planner for this September.

Beowulf by Seamus Heaney.  Hands up - I've little knowledge of this and it is one of the books that has made a recurring journey to the TBR stack. Time to put that right. I have a shelf full of the great poet's works and often lose myself in the various collections. Why now with Beowulf?  I've spotted it a few times recently. Surfacing? Perhaps the old adage provides an answer, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

The School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. I remember studying this at school and our teacher really brought it to life. I enjoy plays with witty dialogue and this one has that in abundance. This edition dates from 1964 and is in remarkably good condition - only minor scuffs and of course the odd naive annotation from my younger self. It's also short and is scheduled for the end of the month.

So there we are. Six for September. 

Just to really push the accountability thing - I'm also going to add a comment or two in footnotes to this post so that I can record my reactions to what I have read. 

Come on TBR - let's go!

Montaigne : Stefan Zweig. Pushkin Press

Title: Montaigne

Author: Stefan Zweig.  Translation and Introduction by Will Stone

Published: Pushkin Press / Kindle 2015

First published 1941

I regret to say that I had not previously read anything by Stefan ZWEIG (1881-1942).  However, I was intrigued to follow up on a recommendation to read this small volume on Montaigne, whose lifestyle and essay writing I have long found fascinating. 

What struck me most in this short biography is the overlap with Zweig's own situation in fleeing the Nazi onslaught of the 20th century to Montaigne's position as a renaissance philosopher and essayist amid societal upheaval at the end of the 16th century.  There are clear resonances with our modern world and I found myself on several occasions marking material that could apply just as much to today as it did in those earlier periods. 

There is a substantial introduction to the book by Will Stone who translated the original and in his observations there was also much to highlight and think about. In essence then, this is a short book, that took only a couple of hours to read but whose lessons persist in the memory. 

I noted some and think they bear close attention as the issues examined are of recurring concern.

Here is one on Rattling chains:

"It seemed to our generation that Montaigne was simply rattling chains we thought long since broken and we could never imagine that in fact Fate had reforged them for us, far crueller and stronger than ever before". (p40)

Another on Essential Values:

"For one of life's mysterious laws shows that we only notice the authentic and essential values when it's too late". (p40)

And on Freedom:

"The true essence of freedom is that it can never restrict the freedom of another". (p109)

I thought about Zweig and Montaigne earlier this evening when I listened to a discussion between two politicians. One of them was espousing older, time-honoured values of humanity, rights and freedoms while the other insisted that times had changed and those values were no longer relevant to the modern world.  I have to say that I instinctively recoiled when I heard the latter.  I read once that you only really know what your values are when they are offended so I will need to explore that recoil to better understand it.  But I find it fascinating that Zweig in his time of peril found comfort and direction in Montaigne's essays from 300 years earlier. 

The lesson seems to be that we should be open to those human values and not to shrink into ourselves as

"the more we reduce our space, the more petty concerns prey on us". (p122)

The short book is full of such mind-expanding thoughts. However, I want to close with this one from three centuries ago that I have chosen as an antidote to the swirls of negativity, fear and doom mongering that I increasingly sense all around:

"My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which have never happened."

Michel de Montaigne

More:

Check out this Wikipedia article on Stefan ZWEIG

Closed opening: Kraków near Museum of Contemporary Art

 

In Kraków for a short break we had been making our way to the Oskar Schindler factory which sits alongside the Museum of Contemporary Art. 

We chanced upon this painted doorway which certainly catches attention. I knew as soon as I saw it that it would pass the test for inclusion in my photo collection of Closed Openings. 

No descriptive words for this one. 

Just look at it.  Observe.  Anything come to mind?

Balanced stone stack

Walking a beach today, we came across a group of stones balanced on top of each other. Not a natural formation and clearly someone had found the time to engage in creative effort. How much time? How much effort?

No doubt it was a meditation of sorts. Picking the right stones and shells to lend structure and support.

The stack looked as if it would topple over at the slightest touch but no…it resisted the incoming waves that washed and frothed around.

I stepped into the foam to get a close-up picture. I thought of other times; childhood, when armed with buckets and spades we sculpted with sand. This seemed the product of maturer effort - a rock castle and moat.

Later we watched as a small flock of turnstones flew down, plumage the colour of the foreshore, and got busy living up to their appellation, flicking over pebbles in search of food. Did the stack look out of place to the birds? Upset their larder?

Not a bit of it, they took it in their glide.

A small stone stack, kinder to the environment than litter or graffiti.

A vintage bottle surfaces

 

It may have been the light from a sunny day at the beach because a glint of something caught my eye and made me pay attention. Glass. I stooped to look closer and picked up a bottle.

Had it been just discarded or washed up? It looked as if it had been buried, brown caked-on sand around its neck, still stoppered.

I could feel the embossment on the body and dusting it down could read the details:

REGISTERED. WJ. BRIGGS. BELFAST and signed WJ.Briggs. But what did it contain?

Holding it up to the light I peered inside hoping to find a roll of paper - a message in a bottle maybe. No such luck, it was quite empty. No hint of or even a trace of whatever liquid it once contained. One thing was sure, it was a glass bottle, dulled by abrasion but clearly vintage.

This would-be beachcomber wanted to learn as much as possible about it.

Questions surfaced. Why was the bottle here? How come? What was nearby? Who left it, an adult or a child? Does the Briggs company still exist? Where was it?

Standing on a shoreline answers to those questions would not be immediately forthcoming and so I took a picture - the one above and returned the bottle to its finding place, tucked in safely so that it wouldn’t cause injury to a child or animal. I’ve used online reverse image searches before and figured that using that technique when I got home might satisfy some of my curiosities. Sharing the picture later, a close family member with a specialist interest in old glass and object biographies berated my decision, “Oh you should have brought it home for me!!!” followed not long after with we’ll have to go back and get it. Well, we could do. More on that later.

The reverse image search, turned up loads of stuff. Who knew? Bottles like this one are indeed vintage. Some even attract good prices on online sales sites. My find appeared to be in better condition than several others I viewed. Helpfully some of the online vendors had done their own research and provided supporting details for their sale items. The Briggs family it transpires were manufacturers of aerated waters and were based in Belfast’s Pine Street from the mid-1880s to the early 1900s. The business appears to have developed through the family line and changed name in the 1970s. My bottle appears to date back to around 1910.

That’s something. How has it managed to survive intact for over 100 years? I think of the history through which it has endured; the bubbled memories of lifetimes though which it has remained hidden.

How has it surfaced? Lara Maiklem in her wonderful book, A Field Guide to Larking (Bloomsbury, 2021) explains in a section titled, The Best Time To Beachlark, that high winds and rough seas can cause movements of sand and drag up hidden objects from the sea floor. We have had plenty of storms and rough seas over the past year so that indeed could be the reason the bottle has found a new hiding place.

Could I recover it? I think so. You see poor substitute as it was for the vintage bottle the photo has at least a modern attribute. Geotagging. When I took the picture on my phone I hadn’t realised it added other data such as latitude and longtitude. So when I click on the information button that accompanies the photo it pulls up a map of where the image was taken.

Spot on! Yes, that’s exactly the place. So next time there I’ll go beachlarking, phone in hand and hope that it’s still there. I would hate to see it on an online auction site.

And I’m also thinking that I’ll bring my own well-stoppered bottle with a note inside to cast on an outgoing tide.

On the proximity of trains

A railway line runs close to the rear of our home. Local and express trains including the hourly ones serving the Belfast/Dublin route hurtle past every fifteen minutes and apart from the occasional sustained warning blast of an air horn we don’t pay them much attention. Visitors to our home are taken aback: “Does that noise not bother you?” It doesn’t. It is simply part of the soundscape of where we live; something we are used to.

Our paternal family has close connection with the railway. Granda Christy was a driver on a steam locomotive for the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) which also operated in Northern Ireland. A story is told of him stopping his engine on the Antrim Coast as he felt that the sound coming back to him from up ahead was not quite right. His intuitive experience was correct, boulders had fallen unto the track. Catastrophe avoided. A close call.

Christy TRACEY with his steam locomotive. Photo source unknown.

Exterior sounds are one type of resonance and those inside another. When travelling by train, I love that rhythmic, clickety-clack of the wheels and that steely, acidic squeal of the rails. I often find myself internally reciting one of my all-time favourite poems, the wonderful, Night Mail by W.H. Auden which was composed to accompany a film documentary of the same name. Consider this opening verse

This is the night mail crossing the border
Bringing the cheque and the postal order
Letters from the rich, letters from the poor
The shop at the corner, the girl next door

Say it with that clickety-clack and you get that lovely onomatopoeic sound of the train wheels. Why not stop reading this now and go look it up?

Go on, there’ll be another train of thought in a minute …

Back to where we live. We have a train station nearby and two level crossings, one for pedestrians only and another for people and vehicles. Protecting the traveller clearly figures in the minds of railway managers as there are several safety notices on display. And at the station you are instructed to stand well behind the platforms vivid yellow line.

All those warnings. Best not to get too close.

Those warnings were nowhere in evidence late last year when our travels took us to Vietnam. Among many cities we visited Hanoi and near our hotel was the aptly named Train Street. Apparently it is the place to visit to experience the regular and close encounter of a huge passenger train. Thousands of people turn up. The odd barrier, no yellow lines and few if any warning lights. Instead tiny businesses of bars, restaurants and shops ply their trade within inches of the passing trains. Merchants can be seen walking across the tracks, serving their customers and sometimes pulling back tables and chairs that maybe, just maybe are a little too close. While the train is still far enough away people place bottle caps on the tracks. These are recovered flattened to wafer thin after the train has passed over them.

This short video captures the sense of proximity and let’s face it, danger.

Train Street. Quite an experience. A thousand miles away from our day-to-day living.

Try to cross while our local level-crossing barrier is closed could open you up to a hefty fine.

Railway buffet services here aren’t about to serve platform drinks shaken and stirred by huge passing locomotives. And that’s as it should be. Leave that up close rail stuff to the railway staff.

I’ll still enjoy the trains going by, listening out for those long-carriage Belfast/Dublin ones and think about who is going where. I’m sure I’ll also think back to Hanoi and Train Street.

And with each blare of the modern day air horns I know I’ll remember my grandfather, translating those klaxon sounds to mental whistle blasts from the age of steam.

The open and shut charity bookshops

 

There are times when I feel that I have to clear out some of my books. It’s not that I no longer appreciate those that I have decided to re-home, it’s more about making more space to let in the new.

My latest dispersal included several books not on display but stored away in cupboards. It has been years since I opened them and I decided that they needed a more conscientious custodian. Use them or diffuse them! is my new guiding mantra.

Mind you, flicking through some that I had earmarked for donation, I found myself rereading. Interest renewed I decided to keep them. They live to light another day.

I wondered how much I had invested in the books and did a quick online search to check availability and current values. Even some of my pristine hard covers were only just a few £ pounds and there were loads for sale. So having decided to send the books on their way to new owners, it would be relatively simple and cheap to buy them again if I found I was missing them.

Selections made and packed into carrier bags it was off to the charity bookshop.

I had recently been to a newly opened store and spent some time discussing books and authors with the very knowledgeable vendor there. He welcomed the donation and thought many of the books would appeal to his customers. He also asked if I would complete a donation form describing the various books I was leaving. Of course: Miscellaneous titles, business and marketing, popular psychology, philosophy, leadership and some novels. That categorisation of the books was instructive, as many had been bought during my working life and now seemed less relevant in these retirement years. I was delighted that a future good home was assured and said that I would return in a couple of weeks with more books. Back home I resumed the task of clearing.

It’s a pleasure to handle books and I lost myself in the flow of thinning out their spaces. I packed up some heavyweight volumes in terms of both their poundage and content. I was sure that my new bookseller chum would be just as impressed as last time. But why had I packed so many? Clearly this new-found, guilt-free enthusiasm for parting with books had got the better of me. In my rush, I picked the wrong type of carrier bags; you know the ones with handles that dig deep?

I stopped a few times carrying the books to the charity shop only to arrive and find it closed. The times of business sign on the door confirmed that it should have been open but no - Books bite back!

What to do? Bring them home? Obviously not as that would mean stop/starting again, swapping loads and massaging fingers. Decision tome!

I knew there was a second-hand bookstore nearby where I could drop them off and although I have bought many a bargain there I was still wedded to that notion of goodwill gifting of the books. I thought of another charity shop that specialised in book sales. I had often gone there too and my donation would have the added benefit of supporting their good cause. It wasn’t far away either.

The staff member at this next bookshop was pleased to receive the carrier bags asking, as the first recipient did, whether I wanted them back. No thanks.

Have I missed the books? No, not yet.

I have though been tempted to call back into each of the shops to see if any are on their shelves and to check for how much they are selling them. My bookshelves aren’t empty however. Those freed-up spaces didn’t stay clear for long and new book tenants jostle for attention. They sit next to old inhabitants, familiar titles. Although many of these are in various states of wear and tear I couldn’t bear to part with them. Books are a bit like friends - the older, the nicer. Looking around I see instantly that some of them were pre-loved and picked up in charity bookshops. Other readers must have had their own clear-outs.

Thanks to those previous owners whose charity ends at home.