In 2018, I decided to create a new book blog, Thornfield Hall. I planned to do “alternative” writing about books, but sometimes on personal subjects.
Blogging was not always so tranquil as it is at Thornfield Hall. Dear Reader, how was I to know that grammar was a political issue? At my old blog I wrote a piece about the habit of using the third-person plural pronoun, “they,” where the singular pronoun, “he” or “she,” was correct. There was indignation: I was told about the “singular they.” I had never head of the word non-binary, and had no idea that trans people often prefer to use plural pronoun, “they.”
This Is What Comes of Not Keeping Up.
The form of the blog, or weblog, dates back to the late ‘90s, when I did not properly have the internet. My modem took ten minutes to power up – one drank coffee or took a short walk while it struggled and made an eerie buzzing noise – and it was could not upload pages with too many images. But I enjoyed simple book boards where people discussed books.
There were many enthusiastic readers online. There were gatherings in New York, California, and the South. I was impressed with the kindness and intelligence of the online community. I enjoyed having coffee with them in person, shopping for books, and going to readings.
After we got Wifi, I began to read blogs. I enjoyed the informal writing more than traditional reviews.
I tend to read old books and classics. Occasionally I write about new books, but only when I admire them.
Far better to stick to the classics. Is this biblio-anarchy? It doesn’t seem radical, but perhaps it is. I try to limit screen time, too, because I get so many recommendations at blogs and Bookstagram that I become a super-consumer.
That’s why I want to become a biblio-anarchist. I don’t want to destroy anything, but I want to stop my “production-consumer” cycle.
Happy reading!
1. Pam Houston’s Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country, a collection of linked autobiographical essays. In 1993, Houston was living in a tent when her agent gave her a check for $21,000 for her debut collection of stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness, with the advice, “Don’t spend it all on hiking boots.” After traveling around the West, Houston bought a 120-acre ranch in the Colorado Rockies. Although she spends half the year teaching, she always comes back to the ranch, which is the home of her Irish wolfhounds, two elderly horses, a bonded pair of rescue miniature donkeys, Icelandic ewes, and chickens. Houston, who has been a skiing instructor and led white-water raft trips, tells fascinating tales of nature, endurance of the cold, and quasi-primitive living. I cried and cried over the death of one of her dogs.
2. Robert Graves’s compelling historical novel, I, Claudius. This classic, set in the first century A.D., is the autobiography of the crippled, stuttering Roman emperor Claudius. He learned to keep his head down to survive the dangers of the reigns of three emperors: Augustus, who brought peace after civil wars but whose wife Livia poisoned his heirs and many others; Livia’s cruel, perverted son, Tiberius, who was a good general but uninterested in empire and spent long periods frolicking on Capri; and mad murderous Caligula, whose insane cruelty ruined more lives than Livia. Claudius becomes emperor at the end of the novel, and the story is continued in Claudius the God. Many of the events are based on episodes in Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars, which Graves translated.
APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE TO MY ENGLISH FRIENDS.