Yes, We Have a New Name

And it's about d$#% time

In the interest of dragging myself into the present, I thought it was time to refresh my newsletter. Read: actually start sending it again on a regular basis. Thus, the newsletter is reborn with a new name, No Rooms Without Books, inspired by a quote attributed to Cicero:

Sounds great, right? Just like that silver-tongued Cicero to come up with a zinger. Well, he came up with a lot of them, but not this particular one. At least not exactly. As is the case with many quotes, the attribution isn’t clear. The fab website In Rebus, a phenomenal resource for Latin in popular culture, explains fully here. While the Romans had high regard for ideas and the written word—and certainly appreciated mastery in rhetoric—they didn’t have the same relationship to physical books we do today. It would be hard to, what with all the unrolling scrolls to try to find a specific place in a text. Books were often read aloud rather than existing as something to be curled up with in a cozy nook.

Regardless, book lovers throughout history would agree with the sentiment of the quote-that-isn’t-a-quote. Thinking about all this made me contemplate how easy it is to overlook the details of things. Not just the attribution of quotes, but so much around us. We’re barraged with an overwhelming amount of information and alerts (I’m looking at you, phone).

So I want to slow things down with this newsletter. To consider things we might not be noticing. Books we’ve overlooked. The simple beauty around us. The good stuff. There seems to be no escaping the constant drumbeat of doom; the world is insane right now. That doesn’t mean we have to completely give ourselves over to it. We can take some time to find the good.

At the moment, I’m in research mode for Emily #20, which means there’s an ever-growing stack of books on my desk. This is one of my favorite stages of the writing process. Probably the case for anyone who writes historical fiction. We love delving into the nitty-gritty details of the past. It’s a beautiful thing to get to do that as part of your job; I’m grateful for it and will not overlook the pleasure it brings.

One thing about this stage, however, is that it prevents me from reading as much fiction as I’d like. In the past year, I’ve started listening to audiobooks when I’m going to sleep. I’ve got to be careful about what I choose. If it’s something I don’t already know well, I’ll stay awake to find out what happens next. It’s got to be an old favorite, something I can relax into and that’s engaging enough to stop any ruminating likely to keep me awake. In my case, any of Jane Austen’s novels are an obvious choice. Once I’d run through all of them, I started casting about for what should come next and settled on the first of Anthony Trollope’s Palliser novels, Can You Forgive Her?

This brought me back to thinking about all those things we overlook. I have memories of my parents watching the BBC adaptation when I was a very, very small girl. Many years later, I read the books and fell in love with Trollope’s wit, the complicated nature of his characters, and the way he deftly intertwines politics and social commentary. Yet I haven’t read them since. What a mistake, but what a delight to revisit them now.

My parents gave me their copies of the series after my dad found a 19th century set of Trollope’s complete works and bought them for my mother. I have a habit of leaving ersatz bookmarks in situ when I’m finished with a book, specifically so that years later, I can remember what I was doing when I read it before. Here, I used the label from a ball of yellow baby yarn. It’s the project that taught me how to knit, many, many moons ago. So much time has passed since then that my son is now in his second year of doctoral studies. Loved finding that label and remembering making his blanket.

I’ll be back next month with another book worth revisiting. In the meantime, what’s one you recommend? Let us all know in the comments.

xoxo

-tasha