Give me a book you can chew over in small chunks for some real food for thought
Iam a slow reader. I like to attribute this to the fact that I write for a living and therefore I value every word. Others might have a different explanation, but I was relieved recently when a writer I regard highly admitted to me that he too is a slow reader.
Nevertheless, when I peruse the packed bookshelves that surround me in my workspace, I sometimes panic at the number of tomes I haven’t read.
Since Zoom became the platform of choice for social and business gatherings, these bookshelves form the background to my on-screen presence and I inevitably get a slagging about it.
A group of friends I connect with once a week are champion pokers of fun and don’t take prisoners when they hunt as a pack.
Half-way through our first virtual gathering and two-thirds of the way down a large glass of wine, I was asked whether my background was just wallpaper or real books.
After assuring the inquisitor that the books were real, I had to deal with a more forensic probe: “Have you read them all?” Thankfully another participant came to my rescue and said: “I suppose, like myself, you’ve read all of some of them and some of all of them?”
As a slow reader I am a fan of digestible books, the ones you can read a chapter at a time, whenever you want to, without feeling you have to keep going until the final full stop.
Compendiums lend themselves to this, as do collections of short stories or poetry.
Recently, I came across a wonderful and fascinating book entitled In Our Time Celebrating Twenty Years of Essential Conversation.
Published in 2018 and co-authored by Melvyn Bragg and Simon Tillotson, the book is based on a BBC Radio 4 programme of the same name presented and produced respectively by the pair. Broadcast every Thursday morning it features various panels of academics exploring ideas from the worlds of history, science, religion, philosophy and culture.
The 50 short chapters are distilled transcripts of the more well-received shows across the topics.
Each one features a brief introduction and a summary of the discussion. The conversations often continue after the programme has gone off air, and snippets of these post-broadcast discussions are included.
In the history section there is a fascinating account of the death of Elizabeth I and the panic to find a successor in order to avoid a dangerous vacuum.
According to one member of the panel, in her final months Elizabeth knew she was ill and refused to go to bed as she feared she would never get out of it.
In an echo of the current racial tensions plaguing the US, a chapter deals with the Lancashire cotton famine that came about as a result American Civil War.
In the 19th century, 75pc of cotton supplied to the Lancashire textile industry was imported from the southern states of America, where 1.8 million slaves were enchained in its production.
In 1861, at the start of the American Civil War, the Confederate states halted cotton exports in a bid to pressurise Britain and other European powers into supporting the southern cause.
The extreme shortage of the commodity led to widespread unemployment and distress in Lancashire.
Heroism
Nevertheless, between Christmas and New Year 1862-63, the citizens of Manchester sent a message of support to President Lincoln in his efforts to emancipate the slaves and he replied, describing their statement as “an instance of sublime Christian heroism”.
Other topics covered in this lovely book include: the intricacies of bird migration; the life and philosophies of thinkers from Simone De Beauvoir to Confucius; the gin craze that plagued the early decades of 18th-century Britain (thanks to the arrival of William of Orange); the mystery of dark matter; the Icelandic Sagas ‘charting the feuds and loves of early Icelandic life’; the 12th-century works of German composer and visionary Hildegard of Bingen; and intriguing natural events like ‘the year without a summer’ in 1816.
The publication is packed with unique gems of information and replete with exquisite nuggets of high-grade tittle tattle. It will certainly add to one’s knowledge and enhance one’s capacity to add scintillation to conversation on Zoom or in person.