Forget the ink, the milk, the blood –
all was washed clean with the flood
Dry January? – fat chance, the fields are like soaked sponges, the water-table lurking just below the surface, roads turned to rivers, fields turned to lakes – 31 days of what seemed like non-stop rain.
Fingers crossed for Dry February!
A word popped-up this week – ‘empathy’ – I can’t quite remember the full context, I think perhaps it was a fleeting comment in a radio article about the lack of it, no doubt connected to some social media comment posted in capital letters from a faraway land. “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another” is how one dictionary describes it (although I’d quite like to add the words ‘and experiences’ after the word feelings). I’ve often felt that our bookshop has a version of ‘empathy’, it looks outwards to our world, our curiosity makes that world a little bigger and with it comes a greater understanding of those who cross our threshold – both real and virtual. That desire and ability to experience the world through the eyes of another is one of the great joys of being a bookseller, just as the act of reading itself also has an empathetic quality, the desire for the reader to see and experience a world through the words and imaginations of the writer. These sound like and are perhaps virtuous qualities – the givers and receivers both benefit, a mutual understanding grows and the world gets a little better. Sure, it’s not all fluffy and lovely, it would be naive to assume that empathy is always returned in the same quantity and quality in which it is given, but that shouldn’t prevent it being given in the first place.
I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;
one long thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame
to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,
and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,
so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from the play,
I think to when we opened cold
on a rain-dark gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign,
and I’d read into its blazing line:
forget the ink, the milk, the blood –
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters
and none of this, none of this matters.
There’s plenty of books to get excited about this week, and I’m thrilled that Catherine Airey’s debut, Confessions, has made it into the top 20 fiction bestsellers list across indies! This multi-generational, heartbreaking Irish novel will have you hooked until the very last page. In non-fiction, Jamie Oliver’s take on the miraculous air-fryer is at a Coles Special Price; Ingrid Robeyns argues against the billionaires of the world; and Joe Tucker dives into painting. Finally, we’ve got meaningful prose from Hannah Gold and raucous adventures in the new InvestiGators book for little ones.
As always, if there’s anything you need, just pop by or reply to this email!
From Sophie
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