“There’s more to life than books you know?” (Part One)
Another lockdown day and another challenge…To list, without comment, my ten favourite books. Well this is as equally impossible as the Albums one. So, I shall do the same again, and comment as well because, well, I’m fascinated to read what I think.
I don’t know the exact date, but I can assume it was around May/June (The classroom was sweltering), and I am guessing it was around 1980. My English lesson at Hillside Secondary Modern in Borehamwood was about to start, and it was to be conducted by Mr Wilson, who was a teacher that terrified me. He was also a games teacher, and although I could kick a ball vaguely in the intended direction, and could run fast, he was still a rather fearsome prospect. He was from the North. I hadn’t met many people from the north before. My experience had been via the television, Coronation Street (When it was good) and Boys from the Blackstuff (Always good). He handed out a book that we were going to read together and study. Thomas Hardy? Never heard of him. I was totally floored by the opening chapter though. Egdon Heath became real. Sitting in a sweaty and largely disinterested classroom, I could smell the heath, hear the birds, and feel the wind in my face. Hardy’s personification of a heath still stops me in my tracks. I am not a literary expert by any stretch, and although I could be reasonably described as well-read, I am not sure my words can do justice the the opening of this novel. However, I am of the opinion that good writing should transport you, and this book does it more than any other I have read. From the mysterious beauty of Eustacia Vye to the strange Reddleman; Diggory Venn, the character are real, the locations stunning and the plot haunting and beautiful. I have often wished for a film or a TV series that could do it justice, but no disrespect to the 1994 version, but nothing could ever get near it. I adore all of Hardy’s work, but this one is untouchable to me. It opened up a world of literature that up until that point had been limited to horror stories , poems and anything that would make me laugh. This was the day my reading-self grew up.
I often wonder what happened to Dave Wilson? I’d love to tell him what his choice of book did for me, and how that single lesson, and the subsequent readings actually changed my life. He seemed a lot less terrifying after I realised that he loved this book too.
