Reading the world

Reading the world

Living in a small town, not a driver, with fairly severe mobility issues (over any kind of distance), I feel the world getting smaller. I have spent half my life in cities - Bristol and London, with lengthy stays in Paris, Florence and a month a year over several years some time ago travelling the Continent as a teacher - and I am not a city girl (hence moving back to Kenilworth) but I miss the cosmopolitan diversity and all that goes with it. Friends are just back from Rome and I now long to go and visit places, mostly to see art I haven't yet seen - Madrid, New York, Amsterdam, as well as revisiting places I love.

There is a way to experience the world from home though, and that is through reading. This year I have been reading the longlist for the International Booker Prize, and that's been wonderful - visiting Venezuela, Argentina, Italy, Germany, Korea, Soviet Russia and more. Each book has been a wonderful insight not just into a different culture but into the way literature can evoke and explore aspects of those cultures.

For book clubs I have recently been reading Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (set during the Biafran war) and James Baldwin's Another Country (half way through this). And a while back, Antal Szerb's Journey by Moonlight was wonderful for taking me through a number of European countries.

I want to say more but this is the start of Blogtober, aiming for a blog post every day this month, so I will try to be more detailed in future posts! (And I will make sure I include images - none of the photos I took of these books come out well here!) The posts won't all be about what I am reading, but I have been thinking a lot lately about the need to experience the wider world. It's one of the things literature can do so well, but I still feel the need to be among people, buildings, food, climate different from my own.

One day I will travel again!

Victoria Mier, 1 October 2024