Up very early with my nine year old little man whose heart is still broken from viewing Where the Wild Things Are last night. "Too sad, Mom. It broke my heart." As he plays his heartache away, I am browsing book blogs, and could not help but notice that our UK friends are taken up with the just-released Howards End Is On the Landing: A Year of Reading From Home by Susan Hill. It was the cover design that captured my attention first. Then considered this opening:
"It began like this. I went to the shelves on the landing to look for a book I knew was there. It was not. But plenty of others were and among them I noticed at least a dozen I realised I had never read.I pursued the elusive book through several rooms and did not find it in any of them, but each time I did find at least a dozen, perhaps two dozen, perhaps two hundred, that I had never read.
And then I picked out a book I had read but had forgotten I owned. And another and another. After that came the books I had read, knew I owned and realised that I wanted to read again.
I found the book I was looking for in the end, but by then it had become far more than a book. It marked the start of a journey through my own library."
Then the publisher's note:
"Early one autumn afternoon in pursuit of an elusive book on her shelves, Susan Hill encountered dozens of others that she had never read, or forgotten she owned, or wanted to read for a second time. The discovery inspired her to embark on a year-long voyage through her books, forsaking new purchases in order to get to know her own collection again.A book which is left on a shelf for a decade is a dead thing, but it is also a chrysalis, packed with the potential to burst into new life. Wandering through her house that day, Hill’s eyes were opened to how much of that life was stored in her home, neglected for years. Considering everything from Macbeth and Tristram Shandy through Virginia Woolf, Dickens and Roald Dahl, Howards End is on the Landing charts the journey of one of the nation’s most accomplished authors as she revisits the conversations, libraries and bookshelves of the past that have informed a lifetime of reading and writing."
Then my own bursting shelves. How can I justify buying a book that is in part about not buying more books but exploring the ones you already own. Hmmm. Checked out Book Depository anyway. Not available in US yet. Tell me, should I order it?
Update: The author, Susan Hill, has kindly contributed the following to the comments section of this post: "You may be interested to know that my American publisher turned it down. He said nobody in America would understand it and most Americans would not have heard of half the books. I was shocked, not at being turned down but at the reasons. It will now be distributed in America by Profile Books, the English publisher." Not sure who her American publisher is, but they really missed the boat on this one. Like Jackie has stated in the comments, after reading this, I went directly to the author's website and purchased a signed copy there. Surprised that as a somewhat dim witted American, I was able to navigate the order form.