Sunday Salon: Antidotes to autumn blues

Summertime in the UK may not be over officially yet (we’ll still operating be on summer time until October 27) but the long evenings have come to an end.  While I love the colours of autumn and the occasional days of crisp air and blue skies, I hate the thought of the long months of wet, cold weather to come; of going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark.

My mood has however been temporarily lifted this week with the aid of some fellow book bloggers from thousands of miles across land and sea from the UK.

In last week’s Sunday Salon I introduced the new feature on this site where I invite people from different parts of the world to give some insights on their local literary scene. The View from Here feature went live this week with an article from Mystica about Sri Lankan literature. She fits in reading between tending her tea and fruit plantations. I suspect I have a very romanticised view of what this involves but I like to picture her sitting in the shade of an orange tree letting the scent waft over as she turns the book of her page.  Still, it’s an image that’s sustained me as I drove home from work under grey clouds.

My next featured blogger Angus Miranda, couldn’t be more of a contrast. Angus lives in the fast paced world of Manila, the capital of the Philippines where he works as a technical writer. His blog site bookrhapsody traces his quest to read at least one book by every winner of the Nobel prize for literature alongside Booker prize winners and world classics.  I love reading about his latest book club meeting (large amounts of food seem to be involved which makes me envious when I compare to the crisps and nuts we get in our meetings). Angus’ inside scoop on the must read writers from his country will be posted in the next few days.

And my final reason to be cheerful was that I eventually got around to reading one of the novels that made it to the Man Booker prize shortlisted title from last year, The Lighthouse by Alison Moore. It’s a fairly short novel with two interwoven stories about characters whose lives never turned out they way they wanted to and who spend much of their time trying to go back. Loss and regret might seem odd themes to view as things to lighten my mood but I enjoyed the careful crafting of the story built on interchangeability of characters and plot-lines, on repetition and circularity.  Delightful reading.

Having started the month on a positive mood now I’m looking for some reading that will help me sustain it for another few weeks at least.