Weekend Reading List: The Mean Reds

"The blues are because you're getting fat, and maybe it's been raining too long. You're just sad, that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid, and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?" - Truman CapoteI've left off blogging properly for a bit, and it may be a while before I regain my former momentum, because I've run into my very own traffic jam of mean reds. It'll pass, not to worry. Meanwhile, why don't you celebrate Truman Capote's anniversary (he was born 30 September 1924) by reading (or re-reading as the case may be) his books? I've read them all, back and forth, more than a couple of times. I've read his biographies; A book of his letters; One gets to now him pretty well, as his output was as slim as his publicity was plentiful.
Much of the latter, self-created, was tragic.Pick a book, and just lie back with a couple of needle-work pillows and wait for the mean reds to blow away. I recently read that Henry James commented that Vanessa Bell’s designs for her sister Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press book jackets (above) were “optical echoes of the books that a literary history should listen to,” and thought how true this was of certain books and certain covers (no, not those movie poster ones!). Sadly, book covers will come to pass with more people reading digital book-things from those tablet devices. Book covers will come to pass, along with real books. I have been seeing some people 'reading' novels on their iSocools, and I'm left thinking: They're showing their gadgets off. You can't read something like Mrs Dalloway on a digital reader and understand what it means. These people are pretending to read, aren't they? And with this depressing thought, I leave you to enjoy a serious bout of the mean reds. X