Musings on Reading

     I'm not one of those people that reads a book, finishes it, then starts the next one.  I tend to have a half a dozen on the go at any one time.  In my experience this seems to bother some people, perplexed at how I don't get myself all confused and muddle the various stories up.  My usual answer is that most of us are perfectly capable of watching different TV shows in parallel without blending the plots and much like my TV viewing habits, I read what I'm in the mood for at that particular moment so sometimes it might be something light and funny, or it could be something factual, or science fiction based, or a horror story.

Currently, in the reading pile for 2021 are Unofficial Britain: A Journey Through Forgotten Places by Gareth E Rees, Doctor Who: Rags by Mick Lewis, Equus (the script of the play) by Peter Shaffer, Phase IV (the film novelisation) by Barry N Malzberg, Elidor by Alan Garner, What On Earth Are We Doing, a Ladybird conservation book from 1976.  And Tom Baker's Doctor Who novel, based on a movie that never happened; Scratchman.  Oh, and also; Waiting for You: A Detectorists Zine.

Now initially, that seems quite a random collection, all be it that there are two Doctor Who books in the mix, although tonally they couldn't be further apart.  However the more I review the list the more I can see some strong through-lines connecting the various titles together.  To start with those Doctor Who books.  This is my second attempt at Rags and if I'm honest it might not get finished this time.  Its built around a rather brilliant central idea that all of those 1970 Earth-based Pertwee stories are taking place (UNIT dating paradoxes permitting) at the same time as the UK boom in publishing gory pulpy horror novels such as those made famous by Guy N Smith, James Herbert and lesser known writers but of a similar ilk.  So why not stick the Doctor and Jo Grant into that kind of a story.  Now I'll happily reread both of those named authors and enjoy their books for what they are but so far this is very much a marriage of opposites and I'm not comfortable with how it's making me feel. Equally I cant quite put my finger on why its bothering me so may yet continue the experiment just to discover the answer.  Apart from having been bought Scratchman this Christmas, I think I picked it up because I knew enough about the planned film version to know that it also contained an Earth based folk horror influenced tale but one delivered through the warm and fruity tones of  Tom Baker and his 4th Doctor.  I clearly still wanted to enjoy that kind of Doctor Who story but replaced the first with a version told in lighter hues.  Not to say that Scratchman's killer scarecrows marauding and murdering their way through an English village doesn't have its disturbing moments but its not as unrelentingly bleak as Mick Lewis' take.

And then we've got a couple of my favorite weird 70's films in the form of Equus and Phase IV, the former in its original play script format and the later as a novelisation - the preferred and most common way to re-experience a film back then.  I'll invariably talk about both those films in future posts but for now, know that Equus explores the darkest of deeds committed by a fragile mind fed on the indoctrination of a rigidly decent English Middle-class upbringing, and the other is what I can best describe as the eco-horror movie equivalent of 2001, where a trippy kaleidoscope of images takes us to both inner and outer space and washes us up on the shorelines of a conclusion but leaves us to make our own way home.  And of course Phase IV is also ultimately a base under siege by an alien intelligence story, which is of course one of the very cornerstones of Doctor Who plots. Pertwee would have got to grips with that particular menace in no time at all.

What On Earth Are We Doing, brings conservation to the Ladybird Children's library and it's quite disturbing to note that little of what was warned about several decades back has really been dealt with now.  We are still poisoning the world and our little corner of it, making the countryside that should be nurturing us, a place of danger and our own slow destruction.  Where is the Doctor when we really need him!

Elidor, a children's book about magic and myth encountered by four children from Manchester is somehow juxtaposed by Alan Strang the protagonist in Equus who creates his own myth and rituals in order to make sense of his feelings about God, sex and horses.

Which finally brings us back to Unofficial Britain: A Journey Through Forgotten Places  which  contains an exploration of  those abandoned and liminal spaces where we create stories to fill the gaps and from where stories create themselves. It reveals our paranoia and fears through the psycho-geographical relationship between landscape and mind.

All of which leaves me wondering if my book choices are quite so whimsical and random as I had first thought. There seems to be some very clear themes and very specific journeys of discovery shared between them. The past is being excavated to find some hitherto hidden truth about my relationship with the culture and country I grew up in.  Random pieces connected to a larger story, found artifacts like those on the display tables of The Danebury Metal Detecting Club.  And there is as much to be learned from ring pulls through the ages as a bejeweled golden aestel.

Steve