"It’s the kind of book I always mean to read, and when I did I felt my soul settle down."
That's Ann Patchett talking - here - about a collection of poetry, and I quote her because I love the way she has captured the experience of reading something which lets all the mental puzzle pieces fall into place, brings serenity, calms and centres.
That line prompted me to ask for suggestions of reading to settle the soul, so if you can think of a book which does that, please do say. Meanwhile I'll nominate Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift From The Sea which I wrote about some time ago.
(The picture is Bluebells in Delcombe Wood by Nicholas Hely Hutchinson, and it is used on the cover of Through the Woods by H.E. Bates, a book I haven't read but one which sounds as though it is soul-settling stuff.)
I'll have to come back later and see what other titles are suggested. I've been sick for the last 3 weeks, so calming books have been balm to me. One that I found both calming and funny was Beverley Nichols A Thatched Roof. Another that sort of swept me into it was Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen. Finally, a book about reading, along with suggested titles is always food for my soul - Honey for a Teen's Heart by Gladys Hunt & Barbara Hampton. I notice that you are reading The Morville Hours - would it qualify as a calming choice? I've had it on my wishlist for a while...
Posted by: Susan in TX | 10 May 2013 at 07:20 PM
Oh, there are so many! For just a few - Miss Read, Gladys Taber, John Mortimer, and as always, first and foremost Mr. Wodehouse.
Posted by: Nan | 10 May 2013 at 07:24 PM
As a cat with no soul (pace Murakami and his cat killer Johnnie Walker) I look forward to seeing what it that will be calming the readers of Cornflower. You will understand that I will not be able to contribute.
Posted by: Dark Puss | 10 May 2013 at 07:47 PM
Some of Virginia Woolf's sentences make me stop and catch my breath. I don't know any off by heart but I'll look some up ....(I guess I know where to find them) and let you know ...eventually !
Posted by: Rhys | 10 May 2013 at 08:01 PM
Get well soon, Susan!
I have long intended to read some Berverley Nichols and have not yet done so, so I'm glad to hear your comment on A Thatched Roof (likewise Out of Africa which has been on the shelf for years).
I do think The Morville Hours is a calming book, and another garden-related one I'd say fits the bill is Four Hedges by Clare Leighton.
Posted by: Cornflower | 10 May 2013 at 08:04 PM
PGW has a unique way of putting the world to rights!
Posted by: Cornflower | 10 May 2013 at 08:04 PM
Tsk, tsk.
Posted by: Cornflower | 10 May 2013 at 08:05 PM
Great! Thank you, Rhys.
Posted by: Cornflower | 10 May 2013 at 08:06 PM
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.
Posted by: Barbara MacLeod | 10 May 2013 at 09:36 PM
I am listening to The Morville Hours and I would say it certainly qualifies as soul settling. Susan Hill's Magic Apple Tree is lovely and I enjoy the pace and writing of Jane Austen.
Posted by: Claire | 10 May 2013 at 09:37 PM
I agree, Magic Apple Tree was wonderful! And Jane is always suitable for any mood. :)
Posted by: Susan in TX | 10 May 2013 at 11:06 PM
Thank you for the well wishes - I hope I'm to the end of it. Now I'm off to look up Four Hedges... :)
Posted by: Susan in TX | 10 May 2013 at 11:07 PM
Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede.
Posted by: AJ | 11 May 2013 at 01:16 PM
Gosh, there's 'a book from the past' - read in my teens.
Posted by: Cornflower | 11 May 2013 at 01:38 PM
Good choices, all.
Posted by: Cornflower | 11 May 2013 at 01:38 PM
A book I've wanted to read for a while (and Virago are re-issuing RG's work). I see one Amazon reviewer says it has "a wonderful sense of peace".
Posted by: Cornflower | 11 May 2013 at 01:41 PM
I enjoyed reading Beverly Nichols' books as a teenager and young woman and don't have the courage to go back to them. I suspect that they will be too lush and too twee, so even with his love for cats I'm not going to do so.
However I might go back to his startling book about his father. I remember a Punch cartoon, or maybe it was in The New Yorker, after this was published where one cat is saying to another "I can never trust Beverley Nichols again!"
I have been reading two British ballad collections and they are very calming--a remembrance of things past for me = school poetry books and choirs.
Posted by: Erika | 11 May 2013 at 11:37 PM
I like the look of this one. I will order a copy from our local bookshop in Milngavie (Glasgow).
While I am on the line ... this bookshop is involved with the Boswell Book Festival, Auchinleck House, Ayrshire, May 17-19. "The World's Only Biography Festival"
Details: www.boswellbookfestival.co.uk
Posted by: Barbara MacLeod | 12 May 2013 at 10:47 AM
On a related 'note', I'm listening to something similar - "Music for a May Morning" by the Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, complete with birdsong and bells!
Posted by: Cornflower | 12 May 2013 at 03:57 PM
I've just finished Wallace Stegner's Crossing to Safety and would recommend it as a very calm and engrossing read. He seems to me to be a male Anne Tyler and writes equally beautifully.
Posted by: B R Wombat | 12 May 2013 at 05:47 PM
That is a wonderful book! ( http://www.cornflowerbooks.co.uk/2009/11/cornflower-book-group-crossing-to-safety.html )
Posted by: Cornflower | 12 May 2013 at 05:53 PM
I will join you with Gift From the Sea, Cornflower. My copy is nearly 33 years old and well used. What I love about this book, is how it changes with you through life. It is a good companion.
Posted by: Ann | 13 May 2013 at 05:23 AM
Gift from the Sea is not the sort of book I would normally read having found books from the same type of genre more irritating than inspirational in the past, but after seeing recommendations from a couple of trusted sources (including your review) I gave it a try and was very pleasurably surprised.
It not only made sense but also gave me food for thought and I was impressed enough to search out my own copy (the first book was from the library)as I am sure that it is a book I will return to in future.
I'm reading The Morville Hours very slowly, a section at a time, but it is proving wonderfully soothing although it, like my long time favourite, The Magic Apple Tree, makes me crave a country garden all the more!
The H E Bates book is on my shelf but up to now I haven't done much more than gaze at that gorgeous cover which takes me back to my childhood when I used to ride through a similar woodland (sticking to the path I hasten to add)
Posted by: LizF | 13 May 2013 at 09:12 AM
We should have a post on books which are 'good companions' - well put, Ann!
Posted by: Cornflower | 13 May 2013 at 10:15 AM
That cover is beautiful!
(Glad you liked Gift from the Sea.)
Posted by: Cornflower | 13 May 2013 at 10:18 AM
I occasionally think that he is all I should/need to read. I'm sure Mr C agrees!
Posted by: Nan | 14 May 2013 at 05:36 AM
The book I have found most calming is Rumer Godden's "Thus Far and No Further." It is fiction but with a large autobiographical element. Early in WWII a woman and her two little girls leave the crowded city in India and find a home high in the mountains among the tea plantations. Her life with her children, the village people and the animals and natural world around her is calming for her and for the reader as well.
Posted by: Mary Grover | 14 May 2013 at 04:32 PM
Indeed I do, leavened by Sherlock Holmes and a good anthology of poetry.
Posted by: Mr Cornflower | 14 May 2013 at 08:58 PM
Another nomination for Rumer Godden - how interesting! Thank you, Mary, I'm off to look up that one.
Posted by: Cornflower | 14 May 2013 at 09:03 PM