When we stayed at Jeanne's house in March, I spent much of my time with my nose in a magazine called 'The Sun'. No not the UK crappy tabloid but a rather wonderful journal that is produced in California and sold on a subscription basis. At the back of each episode is a page of quotations, something for which I have a real penchant. When Jeanne realised I was studying the quotations avidly, she pulled out a book, published by the magazine, that is entirely quotations. I have already quoted from it in my piece about the Velveteen Rabbit some time back.

Last week, I received a parcel in the post from San Francisco, the quotations book. It's called 'Sunbeams'.

I lustily pulled it open and there, on the first page, was this.....

“Properly we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hands.” - Ezra Pound

.....and hopefully you will see how it inspired me!

Books are my great love, though I must caveat that by saying they are my greatest love when thinking about loving inanimate objects, clearly love of other human beings (and you know who I mean there) is always more great than love of printed word on paper. I do feel that the use of the word inanimate to describe books is somewhat misleading because although a book has no feeling or life when you think about it as a bound collection of sheets of paper with prose on them, it is certainly a stimulator of all things animate, from love or lust through to fear or anger, sometimes even simply boredom - all of these varicoloured emotions are certainly associated with animation.

There is no greater pleasure than to sit down with a good book and soak up the language and feel of the book. Sometimes a book gets elevated to my 'faves' just because it happens to hit the right spot for me at the time. Things like 'Elegance' (by Kathleen Tessaro) would fall into that category because it echoes many of my own feelings about fashion and how shallow it is, as would 'Obsession' (by AS Byatt) because of its setting on the night of the hurricane that devastated much of England in 1987 (and I've already said why THAT night was a bad one for me too) and even something like 'Bittersweet Symphony' (by Shyama Perera) falls into this category because of its timely fall into my possession at around the time I was striking out on my own and needing the comfort that things would get better.

Really though, the best sort of book for me is the sort that is written really well. Take 'Snow Falling on Cedars' (by David Gutteson) as an example. This book makes my heart sing. Even now, some ten years since I read it I can still feel the gorgeous descriptive passages and the sense of longing and loss in the hero's story, not to mention the description of the accused man's quiet dignity . I learned from it too but really the knowledge I now possess as the result of reading it is more about how powerful it is to evoke deep feeling through writing.

Equally, I have recently read the autobiography of Nigel Slater - Toast and subsequently bought a couple of his cookery books on the strength of his writing. In the case of his books, there is every bit as much eloquence and feeling poured into writing about what some would regard as the most mundane of subjects. If you haven't already seen his work, you should seek out how he describes the humble potato as an example of evocative, delicious prose. My mouth waters every time I read anything he writes. I can see myself ending up owning all of his books, just to read the prose in them as much as for the recipes.

I shocked a few people last year by taking an electric saw to a book for a pic of the day so I am no stranger to controversy where books are concerned but in my defence it was the most useless book I could find (a shorthand:english dictionary) and I bought it in a charity shop so at least I did some good by buying it.

So for today - the light in my Sunbeam book, especially for Jeanne with my thanks and love.

Last year I was stripping and two years ago, I was confessing my undying love for a beagle and a little fluffy yellow bird!