“It feels to me as thought I’ve become the character in it, and the character’s life ends when the books does. I suppose there are times I’m glad too. Then the ending is like coming out of a bad dream, and I feel all light and free, reborn. I sometimes wonder whether writers really know what they’re doing to us readers. […] I don’t read much anymore […] maybe for that reason. Because I didn’t want books to have me in their power. It’s like poison. I imagined I’d become immune. But you never become immune. On the contrary.”
Peter Stamm, Agnes
I am a ferocious reader. I have always been. As a child, my parents used to bribe me not to read during the summer holidays, but to go out and play with other children. It didn’t really work. One day they found me on the roof of my grandparents’ farm shed. It was sunny and the roof tiles felt warm and the slope was just right to lie down and read. And this passion for reading has never really left me. But, recently I found out that one of my reading habits is rare even amongst avid readers. That is that I can read and walk at the same time. And I don’t mean walk on a treadmill or an empty street/ pavement, but that I can navigate walking through a crowd of people without bumping into anyone or anything whilst deeply immersed into a book.
So, what sort of books can I read whilst walking? Well, the answer is truly any. However, it was only today, whilst walking and reading that I recognised that there is a particular writer that makes walking in London and reading such an incredible pleasure. I was introduced to a Swiss writer, Peter Stamm, some years ago by a friend who used to be my German teacher. And I was immediately converted. There is no complicated language there or story plots that serve the purpose of supporting an idea. His writing just is. The themes are everyday; sometimes nothing of note really happens, sometimes it’s melancholic or outright sad. But, it is always relatable. You can walk and read and imagine these people in the houses that you are passing, in some villages not too far from the city (even if they are not mountain villages); you can recall Mario Botta architecture even though his name is not used anywhere in the book. And so you walk on and so the life carries on and the pages are being turned and you are completely immersed in the book and in the world around you because the book is so relatable to the world around.
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