Post # 82
October 2, 2024
Claire Bodanis
From the depths of her duvet, Claire issues this communiqué on the power of the written word to comfort and restore. In view of the quantity of Strepsils being consumed by Claire at the moment, there will be no audio version of this month’s blog.
As regular readers will know, I aim to make this blog as topical as possible, which usually means writing it on the Sunday afternoon before publication. All was going splendidly to plan last week, and I had some very topical thoughts swirling around my head about my two current favourite subjects, which I know are also of no small interest to most of you. Namely, the role (or not) of AI in reporting (the research phase of our project is drawing to its close!), and the new sustainability reporting requirements, which have suddenly become very real to us with the advent of a new European client who has to report against CSRD in (eek!) March.
But all plans, however splendid, are subject to acts of God,* and I’m afraid my Sunday (and Saturday for that matter) have been spent either asleep or with a nice easy book in hand, my flu-addled brain being capable of little else. I considered not writing a blog at all this month, given that a blog is only worth reading if it’s either useful or interesting to its audience, preferably both; and writing something coherent, let alone useful or interesting, felt a bit of a stretch.
And then I wondered if this very state of incapacitation might in itself generate something useful or interesting. It’s clear that I’m not the only one laid low right now, and probably not the only one feeling guilty about all the things I ought to be doing instead of putting my feet up reading Dick Francis. So, rather than giving you some incoherent, woolly-headed non-insights into reporting this month, I thought I’d share some coherent suggestions on how to while away the lurgy-filled hours – along with a cup of fresh lemon and ginger steeped in boiling water (it really does work). And if you’re wondering why I’m not suggesting a Netflix series, personally I can’t bear to watch screens when I have flu; also, a book objects far less than a laptop to being fallen asleep on!
For the onset of flu (when only short passages are manageable):
Bricks & Mortar, the property supplement in Friday’s edition of The Times. Brilliant for short reads, and feeling pleased that one would never want to live in that house, ever…
P.D. James’s Time to be in Earnest, A Fragment of Autobiography is the fascinating life of one of our best crime novelists, told partly in diary form, making it ideal for short periods of lucidity. And immensely inspiring, since she was clearly not someone who had a grand plan, but took opportunities and made the most of what came her way.
84 Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff. Whatever I say about this delightful book won’t do it justice. It’s the 20-year story told in (real) letters between a New York writer and what was then a leading antiquarian bookshop on what was then a street of bookshops, London’s Charing Cross Road. The back of the book calls it a love story filled with charm and humour – and it is, albeit not of the traditional romantic kind. If you go to 84 Charing Cross Road today, you can still find a special plaque commemorating both author and bookshop.
For reading in bed (nothing too heavy that would be tiring to hold):
The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith. Or, indeed, any of the many books in this charming series. I particularly love it since I grew up in Botswana, and the mood the author creates is absolutely true, including mention of some real-life people whom I remember from my childhood. I also love its gentleness, which some people find naïve, but I find reassuring, particularly in my enfeebled state: “Tea, thought Mma Ramotswe – no matter what was happening, no matter how difficult things became, there was always the tea break – that still moment, that unchangeable ritual, that survived everything, made normal the abnormal, renewed one’s ability to cope with whatever the world laid before one. Tea.”
Sum, Forty Tales from the Afterlives, by David Eagleman. Perhaps not such a good idea if you’ve got that depressive kind of flu that makes you think you’re dying, but otherwise a fascinating book of (40!) imaginings of what the afterlife might be like. One of my favourites being what happens when the afterlife consists of walking into a bar and meeting all the other yous you might have been…
Asterix in Britain, by Goscinny and Uderzo. All Asterix books, in whatever language you read them, demonstrate the incredible skill this writer/illustrator duo have of teasing, while celebrating who or what is being teased – often a national stereotype. Which is why I particularly love Asterix in Britain, which pokes gentle fun at me and my compatriots, while celebrating our foibles too.
For when you’ve graduated to the sofa (but are still having cups of tea brought to you):
Pretty much anything by Dick Francis, particularly his earlier novels. Twice Shy is an especial favourite, although right now I’m reading Banker, because I re-read Twice Shy quite recently. Dick Francis’s books are so satisfying because the protagonist is always the same essential character – decent, an independent mind, stands up to bullies – while always inhabiting a different persona. In the case of the first, a physics teacher who’s also a crack shot; and in the latter, the scion of an investment banking family. And there’s always a connection to racing, which itself is a fascinating world, with so many interesting and different people. (For those who aren’t familiar with him, Dick Francis was a champion jockey before he became an author, so his world is always authentic.) Lee Child and his Jack Reacher novels have a similar effect, although they’re a bit patchier.
George Orwell’s Essays. If one has even a little brain still active and fancies something more stimulating, there’s nothing more satisfying and uplifting than a bit of George Orwell. He has something insightful to say, in the clearest, most distinct prose, on just about anything which needs a sane opinion; and these essays are for the most part pretty short so not too taxing.
Summer Lightning, by P.G. Wodehouse, or indeed anything by P.G. Wodehouse, especially about the Blandings set. How to describe Wodehouse? Anything I say won’t do justice to this greatest of English humourists. His books are witty, funny, charming, gentle; with enough absent-minded elderly earls, terrifying aunts and bumptious private secretaries, not to mention a prize sow, to keep anyone entertained. The words flow off the page into your brain in the most delightful manner, evoking an imagined England of the early 20th century.
For longer periods of convalescence (reflected in their size):
Middlemarch, by George Eliot, is considered part of the English ‘canon’ that we all ‘should have read at school’. I didn’t, although somehow I had a tatty copy languishing unread on my bookshelf. An off-putting, weighty tome, it had succeeded in off-putting me for years. But every so often I feel the need for some improving reading, and earlier this year, I thought that it really was time. Within a few chapters, I realised why this story of middle-class people, in a middle-sized town, in middle England in the 19th century, has stood the test of time.
Master and Commander, by Patrick O’Brian. Or any in this brilliant series about a maverick captain, Jack Aubrey, in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars (based on the life and career of Thomas Cochrane). This book has the accolade of being the only book, and now entire series, I’ve read because I saw the film first. A flatmate at the time had all the books in our sitting room, but she was a complete ship/car/plane nut, and I just wasn’t that interested in ships or in naval history so, rather like Middlemarch, felt totally uninspired by the look of the thing. When I realised from Book 1, Chapter 1, that the story is as much about the evolution of the relationship between the captain and his seafaring doctor friend, Stephen Maturin, and the tension between necessary authority to keep the ship afloat, and a growing belief in democracy and freedom of the individual, well, all I can say is, I read the entire series back to back. And have re-read my favourites at least five times.
And now I feel Part 2 of Banker calling, so I wish you all happy reading – though I hope it’s simply for the love of it, rather than a state imposed upon you by the march of germs!
* I remember many arguments over insurance policies and covid, over whether the pandemic constituted an act of God, and was thus excluded…