If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
“From this evening I must give the British people a very simple instruction – you must stay home.”
On the 23rd of March 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave a speech telling the nation it was time to pull together, do the right thing, and stay home. That is exactly what the majority did, working from home and only leaving for essentials or for a once-a-day outdoor exercise break. Society contracted in an unprecedented way and our lives suddenly revolved around our homes.
In the weeks before lockdown British people began stockpiling, and it was not just jumbo packets of toilet rolls flying off the shelves. People were buying books. In a BBC article from the 26th of March it was reported that Waterstones (a major UK bookseller) had shown online sales increase by 400% week on week. The best-selling title was The Mirror and the Light, the final installment of the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel. Since this book has over 900 pages, people were clearly expecting to have a lot of reading time.
Mr. H and I did not go into frenzied stockpiling mode. We never had a toilet roll crisis, and, thanks to our lifelong love of books, we already had more than ample reading material to see us through several months, possibly even years, of confinement. Upon our marriage, our separate book collections were combined like a happy family of boisterous stepchildren, all getting along but jostling for space in our tiny house.
The result was far from tidy. When I moved to the UK there were too many dearly loved volumes to leave behind. I shipped across boxes and boxes of books. On the day the shipment was delivered, my primary goal was to just get unpacked and make the house livable by dinner time. I shoved books onto shelves willy-nilly, with the optimistic idea that at some point during the long, cold, dark months of winter I would spend a day enjoying a reminiscent wallow while organizing the shelves into proper order.
Seven years later this still has not happened. Our bookcases are a librarian’s nightmare: a hodgepodge of volumes shoved into place wherever they will fit, with little of what appears to be any recognizable system to it. In my previous life this would have driven me mad. Yet somehow we seem to be able to find what we want when we want it – or at least, I do. Mr. H often grows frustrated when he is searching for something specific, even more so when I come along and find it right away.
This, sadly, reinforces his belief that I spend my days purposely hiding things from him just for the fun of it.
In recent times there has been a gradual migration of certain genres. A few years ago, we carved out a corner of the dining room to create a more formalized office area for Mr. H. We set up two bookcases for him by his desk, and onto these were moved all the travel guides, walking maps, reference materials and the dry, esoteric histories and biographies he loves. My cookbooks are now on a shelf in the kitchen, and the living room bookcases have become the repository of what might be considered our entertainment reading.
It is on these bookcases where our similar and divergent tastes are most evident. My peculiar interests are reflected in the shelves of knitting and gardening books, and what I call the gentle reads. During these stressful times I find it soothing to read a few chapters of one of the Stillmeadow books by Gladys Taber, or to once again revisit We Took to the Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich; and for sheer, entertaining exuberance there is nothing like Janet Gillespie’s delightful memoirs, A Joyful Noise, and With a Merry Heart.
Not all my reading is of the gentle variety. In the US, the section of the bookstore I visited most often was the “Mystery” area. Over here in the UK it is called “Crime Fiction”, which I don’t like quite as much. Mystery sounds refined, whereas crime seems a tad tawdry. Mr. H is also a fan of a good mystery, and the two of us enjoy many of the same authors: Louise Penny, Jacqueline Winspear, Christopher Fowler, John Grisham and of course, Agatha Christie. So far I have never been able to get him interested in the Russell and Holmes series by Laurie R. King. Apparently he prefers his Sherlock Holmes in its pure, unadulterated state. He has also never shown the slightest interest in reading any of my Kate Mortons.
Because of this I have no qualms about declaring that I will never attempt to read his three-volume collection on Byzantium by John Julius Norwich, nor will I make any pretext of tackling War and Peace. There are too many books I want to read to waste time on those I feel I should read.
However, as I gradually work my way through our shared library, I do hope to eventually have a go at some of his more challenging, yet highly recommended, reads. He is convinced I will enjoy Black Lamb, Grey Falcon by Rebecca West – once I can gird my loins to embark on that marathon. At nearly 1200 pages, this is a travel journal of monumental proportions. Mr. H says it is a fascinating account of the author’s travels in Yugoslavia in the 1930’s, a vivid picture of a vanished world. To date I have only made it through the introduction.
Also on my list are two histories by Peter Ackroyd, one of London and another about the River Thames. Mr. H claims that they are not at all dry, so we shall have to see. Lighter reading will be The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the complete Richard Hannay collection by John Buchan, the works of Alexandre Dumas, and so many more.
Currently I am working my way through Bleak House by Charles Dickens. Interestingly, my mother-in-law just finished reading Oliver Twist and is about to begin A Tale of Two Cities. She has read most of Dickens’ novels already but is enjoying revisiting them. My brother-in-law has reported dipping in and out of Pickwick Papers. It would appear the Hurd clan is on something of a Dickens kick at the moment.
Since I am someone who always has about three or four books going at once, I am also 
reading Disappearance by Katherine Webb. This novel begins with the Bath Blitz of 1942 and goes back and forth between that period and 1918, interweaving the story of two children who disappear decades apart. The author lives in Wiltshire, so I appreciate the accurate descriptions of areas that are so familiar to me. Additionally, I have at my bedside a copy of Still Cove Journal by Gladys Taber, for those evenings when I want something calm and soothing at the end of a tiring day.
You would think, with all these books at our fingertips, that Mr. H and I would be content to never buy another book again, but you would be wrong. Since lockdown began on the 23rd of March I have bought two new books and pre-ordered two more that are due to be published this summer. Mr. H has also gone on something of a buying spree as he has been studying a period of history that piqued his interest.
What can I say? Book lovers acquire books. We love everything about books – the smell, the feel, the sound when you let your thumb press on the end of the pages and fan them out. We love the endless possibility of worlds to explore, mysteries to solve, people to come to know like dear friends. We love the allure of language and delight in a beautifully constructed sentence, or even a delicious word. We recommend books to friends and feel a thrill of kinship when they love them as we do. We get lost in books, and then we find ourselves again.
Which leaves me wondering what some of you have been perusing during this time when many have had more reading time than normal. If any of you would like to share your favorites which inspire, challenge, comfort and entertain you in times of trouble, please leave a comment.
“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” ~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
An American Wife in Wiltshire 
Dearest Daughter, As you already know I also enjoy Kate Morton and hope she is coming up with another book soon. And of course, Louise Penny’s books. Always looking for those little glues that tell you where the author is going with the story. Harder to do with Ms. Morton’s books. So any ancestral twists to keep track of. Happy Reading
Yes, the next Louise Penny novel comes out soon and I have already pre-ordered it. When it arrives I will no doubt have a late night or two, unable to put it down.
You have many of my favorite authors on your shelves. Louise Penny, J. Winspear, Dickens, etc. I am a real fan of many British Authors. I didn’t see any Rhys Bowen, her Royal Spyness series. Keep up the great writing. Pat G.
Hi Pat. I see we have very similar tastes. I have read the Evan Evans series by Rhys Bowen, and the first of the Royal Spyness series. I need to get back to that one. It kind of got lost when I moved over here and I forgot about it.
It seems the best time slot for “reading” at present is listening to books on Audible. A very interesting one I enjoyed recently was The Poisonwood Bible by Margaret Mitchell. It is historical fiction that recounts the lives of an American Southern Baptist minister, his wife and three young daughters as missionaries in the Congo jungle around the time of its independence. A fascinating look at collision of cultures–the humor, the shock, the grief and the aftermath.