Bedside Reading

Bedside Reading was written for the Victorian Reader.

The pile of books beside my bed, at last count twenty-eight, remains relatively constant.There are a few one night stands, but generally my bedroom books are companions for life. Occasionally, there are books that withdraw to the bookcases in other parts of the house, but more often than not, the cluster of books at my bedside are long term relationships, the ones whose wisdom has no beginning or end.

And I have no intention of reading these bedside books from cover to cover. They are for diving into in random order, according to what gains my attention, responding to the page that falls open. Particular books rise to the top of the pile when the need for their insight or perspective is most urgent.Others remain powerful reminders of truths to be noted simply by their presence.

An irreverence for order sometimes creeps into my reading of other books, the ones that don't make it to my bedroom. These books are the visitors, the ones I rarely keep once they are read, or half-read, or merely flicked through before moving on. I have no desire to horde books.

Even when reading novels, I have a habit of randomly opening pages and reading a quick paragraph, sometimes even the final one, just as a teaser, a quirky habit I do because books allow for that. I can't think of an instance where this has diminished my enjoyment of the full read.

Every so often a rare new book makes its way to me, instantly recognizable as a stayer. The most recent of these is THE PLANETS by Dava Sobel. At first, when its gravitational force pulled me around the bookstand to gaze at its cover, I knew the book was for a friend. By the time THE PLANETS had arrived through my front door, though, I was upstairs and in bed with it. Here there and everywhere, middle, end, beginning, the pages flew open. The next day, on the way to my friend's house, I bought a second copy for myself. It sat beside my bed, glowing.

Having THE PLANETS close fed my dreams. A thorough reading from beginning to end took me another three months. Passages filled me with wonder and I would close the book, spellbound, content to walk with a thought or image for days. As Dava writes:

"Sometimes the stupefying view into deep space can send me burrowing like a small animal into the warm safety of Earth's nest. But just as often I feel the Universe pull me by the heart, offering, in all its other Earths elsewhere, some larger community to belong to."

And, of course, in and around my reading of Dava Sobel's book, I was dipping in and out of the regulars - a contemplation for the day, re-reading another story from the sagas, or about labyrinths or the meaning of life, or simply staring out the window at stars, trying to read the circling forces and interplay of light and shadow on the walls. This is where my favourite reading was done as a child. Reading shadows, finding the story in clouds, patterns on ceilings, observing dust dance in a shaft of sunlight, or wondering whose footprints walked ahead of me in the sand.