Time and place

 
   
      Victoria Finlay's name popped up this morning and I remembered her excellent book Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox (which I no longer have as I lent it to a friend, and sadly....), but what came most vividly to mind was where and when I read it.

    On the long flight to Australia a few years ago I had three books in my bag, Adèle Geras' wonderful novel Facing The Light (and you can see a brief clip of Adèle talking about the book here), David Attenborough's Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster, and Victoria's Colours. Not being one to travel very often or go very far, that journey was particularly memorable for many reasons but not least the reading matter. Flying above, for example, Afghanistan while reading about the lapis lazuli which is mined there meant that places mentioned in the books became so much more real than names on a map tend to be; meanwhile a very English novel allowed me to have one foot still on home ground, so to speak, despite being very far away.

    The books take me back to the time and place I read them, and reminiscing about the journey brings the books to mind; the connection is double-stranded and both plies are equally strong. Other examples: Margaret Forster's Lady's Maid read while in the maternity ward with baby number two, Gone with the Wind aged fifteen and in grim hospital recovering from tonsillectomy!

    How about you?

Comments

[adele geras]

How lovely to find this on Cornflower this morning. It's quite made my day. I don't generally remember where or when I read books but some stand out. Dombey and Son on the train to Venice last year and all through our short holiday, for instance.
I also recall reading a novel by Susan Howatch...can't remember which one but I was in bed with flu and could hardly lift it up to read, it was so heavy!

[Cornflower]

Adele, you've just reminded me of another one: Sally Beauman's Dark Angel while in bed with flu (and it was just a bit too dark for someone feeling awful!).

[Dark Puss]

I don't think I have such a strong sense of association as you do, and it is also likely that I have a rotten memory for books I have read and when or where. However, although I must have read them initially as a child, probably my strongest sense of time & place association is reading the Moomintroll stories in Switzerland to my wonderful friend F when we were in our late teens (or early twenties in my case). Apologies for keeping you awake so late dearest F!

[Cornflower]

Thankyou, DP, for using the word 'association' which is what I was getting at but failed to express so succinctly! And did F. enjoy the stories?

[JoAnn]

I form those associations with books and place, too. A Fine Balance will always remind me of a Florida beach, even though it is anything but a 'beach read'!

[Dark Puss]

Perhaps she might be persuaded to tell you herself!

[melody]

Usually I really try to find a book based in the country or city I am visiting but one memorable train journey in India was completely taken up with reading Margaret Forster's book Rich Desserts and Captains Thins about the Carr family and their famous water biscuits, a wonderful read but at complete odds with life going on outside the window! Similarly Love in a Cold Climate will always conjure up the long and uncomfortable bus journey we endured in Thailand. In future perhaps I will choose totally unrelated books as these are the ones I remember best!

[Julie Fredericksen]

I remember reading "In Cold Blood" as a senior in high school while on spring vacation. It was no vacation for me as I had the mumps (and not for my mother, since all 4 kids had the mumps). Anyway, I don't know which made me more ill, the book or the mumps.

[LizF]

Jane Eyre reminds me of being off school with tonsilitus (I got it twice a year, every year for most of my school days) and curled up in a chair by the coal fire. I will always remember it because the copy I had was a Victorian one which had belonged to my great grandmother and that made it even more atmospheric.
Gone With The Wind was a long summer when I was 13 when all my friends were away at the same time so I really lost myself in it, while The Squire by Enid Bagnold always conjours up a hospital ward after my eldest was born when I was stuck in bed for a whole day being given a blood transfusion - not an enjoyable experience!

[Cornflower]

The Squire would be quite appropriate for that time and place, if I remember it correctly (poor you, though).

[LizF]

The thing that makes it even more memorable is that The Squire is set in summer and when I had my son it was the depths of winter and I was in a rather old fashioned hospital ward with louvred windows which didn't fit properly. If the wind direction changed, snow flakes blew through the gaps and I had the beginnings of a small drift on my bedcover before a nurse noticed and came and drew the curtains.

[Margaret Powling]

Ooh, I have the Victoria Finlay Colours book and love it! As for books read in memorable place, or rather what we remember of the places in which we read them ... I can't hold a candle to other readers' thoughts on this, but I remember one brilliantly sunny January morning several years ago going to Shaldon, on the River Teign estuary, with my husband, with a bag packed with Thermos of coffee and fresh crab rolls and we sat and read in a little shelter facing the sea, like two old biddies. I don't know what husband was reading but my book was Katie Fforde's first published novel, Living Dangerously (well, we were hardly doing that!) It was so warm that we were in shirt sleeves in January, and it was just the right book for the right moment.