Books Do Furnish A Room…

By Bernie Bell

Robert MacFarlane the gifts of reading Bell

The next volume of Andrew Appleby’s ‘Skara’ series – ‘Skara – The Fourth Wave’ – was due to be released in March.  The present situation, means that publication has had to be postponed – no point releasing a book which can’t be distributed, to shops which aren’t allowed to open!

This got me thinking about books, and what a resource they can be for people stuck inside – reading can take you outside, or out of yourself.

We have a house full of books – many of which have been read – many of which haven’t – now’s our chance!

I thought I’d suggest some big, fat books, and books which are in a number to volumes – something you can really get stuck into and/or lose yourself in.

Here goes…..

The ‘Skara’ series, so far, by Andrew Appleby

‘The Once and Future King’ by T.H. White

‘The Cosmic Trilogy’ by C.S. Lewis

All the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling

All The ‘Barchester Chronicles’ by Anthony Trollope

All The ‘Forsyte Saga’ by John Galsworthy

‘The Name of the Rose’ by Umberto Eco

‘THE HOBBIT’  & ‘THE LORD OF THE RINGS’ by  whatsisname………

‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ by C S Lewis

All the Moomin books by Tove Janssen

‘The Gormenghast Trilogy’ by Mervyn Peake

The ‘Mapp & Lucia’ books by E F Benson

‘Black Lamb & Grey Falcon ‘ by Rebecca West

‘The Testaments of Youth/Experience and Friendship’ by Vera Brittain

‘Armadale’ by Willkie Collins

‘Julian’ by Gore Vidal

‘Stark’ and ‘Gridlock’ by Ben Elton

‘The Irish R. M.’ by Somerville & Ross

‘The Balkan Trilogy ‘ by Olivia Manning

‘The Longest Crawl’ by Ian Marchant

‘A Dance to the Music of Time’ by Anthony Powell

‘Contact’ by Carl Sagan

The ‘Rama‘ books by Arthur C Clarke

‘Daniel Martin’ by John Fowles

‘Frost in May’ by Antonia Whyte

And, just for fun – the scripts for ‘Father Ted’ by Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews

And the script of ‘Withnail and I’ by  Bruce Robinson

Father Ted, Withnail and I film scripts Bell

Those are the ones that popped into my head – any other suggestions?


Ed’s note – Looking for something to read and cannot get to the library? : BorrowBox for Orkney Library Members

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1 reply »

  1. I’ve thought of another source of reading material…
    The John Rae Society won’t be able to have open days at the Hall of Clestrain for the foreseeable future, but if folk at interested in John Rae and Clestrain, there are quite a few books available…………..

    https://www.johnraesociety.com/book-list/

    And there are articles about Dr. Rae, and Clestrain, to be read, in The Orkney News………

    https://theorkneynews.scot/?s=John+Rae

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