Words Words Words (and Words)

The ongoing lockdown and overall pandemic plague depression mean I'm still not doing any writing.*

I am managing to keep myself busy, though, because while I seem to be unable to focus on many things, reading remains not only a possibility for me but an active pleasure. So allow me to recommend a couple of books I've read this month.† Both books stand out for me because of the way they're written more than the stories themselves (though I'll add the stories are pretty good).

Image ganked from the bookshop
of the Bodleian Library, Oxford 

First is Reynard the Fox, by Anne Louise Avery. I read this because Lorna follows Avery on Twitter and loves the miniature stories Avery posts there. Reynard is not a miniature. It is, rather, a semi-modern retelling of a series of trickster tales from early modern Flanders. It's a big book (about 450 pages) but I found myself pulled through it, and read the whole thing in about a day and a half.

This impressed me, because I had really expected it to take me most of a weekend to finish. Perhaps I read through it more quickly through the second half simply because I’d got accustomed to Avery’s rhythm and prose style. And her words: the real reason for reading this book, I concluded, was for the vocabulary and the way Avery uses it.

In structure it’s basically a retelling of the fox legends as first printed in English in the mid-fifteenth century (Caxton was both the translator and the printer, I believe). And perhaps because of the episodic nature of the original stories there is something of a repetitive quality to the contents of the book. Ah, but the words! The book is written in English (duh) but it’s a very nicely formed English, with more than a hint of poetry to its rhythm. And, most importantly to me, pretty much every sentence includes a wonderful word I’d not encountered before. Some are English, some are French, some are Flemish or Dutch. All are the sort of thing that makes a reader smile.

Avery provides a glossary at the back, but I was pleased at how clear most of the strange words were simply through their context. (Believe me, when Reynard grabs his lupine enemy, Isengrim, by the balls, we are in no doubt as to what's happened even if the word Avery uses is one I'd never come across before.) Really, I can't praise the writing highly enough. Or as well as it deserves, simply because my own skills seem so thoroughly to have deserted me lately.

And as a physical object this is one of the nicest books I've encountered in years, if not decades. This isn't just a book for reading; it's a book for holding onto and possibly passing on.

(I am going to stop now. The second book I alluded to above I will try to post about on another day, possibly the very next day.)

*Or much of anything else you might call creative. I'm not even watching much in the way of television, once you get past football.

†Yes, I'm keeping track of the year's reading again. And yes, I'm on track for another 250+ year. Possibly more, if I manage to indulge in some book-hunting road trips later in the year.