The Cleah Winnah
There is something to be said about the effects of restriction plus time, in that it helps you think more and more clearly about what you want. This is true in so many small cases in my life…in restricting myself to trying a PhD, and only that, for several years I did in fact, hit upon the time period I would like to make my life’s work, in having put on weight so that few things fit and even fewer look good, I have gotten very clear on what I like and don’t like garment-wise, and having very little money (as a result of the PhD) I can buy so little that I must be very, very clear on what is absolutely necessary. And it is a good way to be.
In Germany, I can’t get many of the English books I want, so I need to really THINK about what is worth reading, for my education or my enjoyment, keep lists, and buy rarely and incredibly selectively. For the most part, once I have established a list, I need to see it through. Because my options are not infinite. I need to keep writing until I finish the PhD, I need to wear my winter boots until they have holes in them. Both of these ‘processes of patience’ grow me, I think. Things are getting clearer.
Anyway, before I was even a couple chapters into this book, it wasn’t grabbing me in the way I expected, and I wanted to put it down. But having so few options made me pick it up again and try again, and I am so, so glad I did. But the mid-point I was ‘rationing’ the book, letting myself read it as a treat when all the work was done, and I didn’t want it to end. It just got better and better and better. It was hilarious.
Isn’t it also funny, that earlier in the year, I didn’t have much good to say about many books? I was only tolerating some of them. So did I change? Has everything just lightened up for me? (In the final year of the PhD? Somehow I don’t think so). Or, did I randomly hit upon 4 really great books to end my year with? Well, I don’t think it was random, it was a result of having stuck to the plan, the overall plan of reading 12 books a year, and altering this plan in minor ways, because, over the course of the year, I did learn more about what I like. This whole process was very interesting. It means, don’t wait until you have the perfect list, or perfect plan, just start. Things can be changed, moved around. But certainly, we get better at doing things by doing them.
I loved Cold Comfort Farm. I hope you read it. Someday, for cozy fun, in the future, I will read more Stella Gibbons, especially the other two Cold Comfort Farm books, Christmas at CC and Conference at CC, which are much less well known, and perhaps not in print any more. When I started to read this book it was because I’d liked the cover with the cow on it when I had worked in a bookshop in 2008, and I knew it was supposed to be funny. I didn’t know that it had taken the (English) world by storm in about 1933. Some people didn’t appreciate that it parodied super-dramatic rural dramas—and those people take things too seriously!