Category: Sunday Salon

The Sunday Salon in the Snow

Published on by Margaret14 Comments

It’s the Sunday Salon in the snow here today. The snow is melting now, but when I woke up this morning my world had turned white. So I’ve put a picture of the view from the window in the header. It’s not a lot of snow, but enough to bother Lucy. She ventured outside and dashed back in.

She was at the top of the steps when I started to take the photo, but I wasn’t quick enough to catch her.

This week I finished reading Consequences – more about that later – and I read The Secret Garden. I’m still reading Eat, Pray, Love. I thought I had to return it to the library because someone else had reserved it but when I took it back they let me renew it.

I’m now reading the Pray section and am really glad that I never decided to go to an Ashram. For some years I too practised Yoga. I was very keen and trained to be a teacher, so I’m very interested in this section of the book. Elizabeth Gilbert certainly had a hard time, adjusting to the ways of the Ashram and struggled with the meditation. The schedule sounds gruelling – the day begins at 3.00am and ends at 9.00pm. There are hours of meditation and contemplation;before breakfast there is an hour of meditation, twenty-minute chanting of the first morning hymn and then the Gurigita, an excerpt from a holy ancient Yogic scripture is chanted. This is 182 verses long in Sanscrit and takes an hour and half to perform. Elizabeth writes

“Over the few weeks that I’ve been here, my feelings about the Gurugita have shifted from simple dislike to solid dread. I’ve started skipping it and doing other things with my morning that I think are much better for my spiritual growth, like writing in my journal or taking a shower, or calling my sister back in Pennsylvania and seeing how her kids are doing.”

This is one of the things I like about this book, she’s down to earth and open about her feelings. It also gives a balanced view. When I taught Yoga I was rather shocked by some people’s ideas and attitudes towards it. I was told by some Christians that by doing the Yoga postures you are worshipping “gods” or “evil spirits”. I like what Elizabeth says:

“While some of these practices tend to look rather Hindu in their derivation, Yoga is not synonymous with Hinduism. True Yoga neither competes with nor precludes any other religion. You may use your Yoga – your disciplined practices of sacred union – to get closer to Krishna, Jesus, Mohammad, Budda or Yahweh.”

Another quote:

“Yoga is about self-mastery and the dedicate effort to haul your attention away from your endless brooding over he past and your nonstop worrying about the future so that you can seek, instead, a place of eternal presence from which you may regard yourself and your surroundings with poise. Only from that point of even-mindedness will the true nature of the world (and yourself) be revealed to you.”

Later today I’m hoping to read some more of Les Miserables but as I’ve started to read Revelation, C J Sansom’s latest book, I may continue with that. I’d also like to start reading Oliver Twist because I was watching I’d Do Anything last night – the search for Nancy and Oliver for the West End show. I haven’t read this and want to know how Dickens portrayed Nancy.

I don’t think I’ll manage all this but I’m always wanting to read more.

One last photo showing mysterious tracks round the bird feeder on the front lawn.

Not really mysterious – I think it was one of the two wood pigeons who regularly pay a visit.

The Sunday Salon – New Books Today

Published on by Margaret12 Comments

Well, new to me at any rate. I’ve been out shopping – it still seems wrong that the shops are open on a Sunday, but every now and then I do go, despite feeling slightly guilty. Of course I had to go to the bookshop, have a cup of coffee and then just have a look at the books. Fatal, I came home with four.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. I’m reading this along with Danielle. I borrowed a copy from the library but I’ll only have to keep renewing it and I’m enjoying it, so I bought it. The copy in the shop was slightly damaged – so I got a discount, can’t be bad.

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, because I enjoyed Half of a Yellow Sun (I wrote about it here). It was one of the 3 for 2 books and the marketing worked, because I then had to pick 2 more books.

I bought The Gathering by Anne Enright – the 2007 Booker Prize winner, because I’ve read mixed reveiws and wanted to see for myself.

And Owen Sheers’ Resistance because it looks so interesting – a war story but this time an imagined history of what could have happened if D-Day had failed and the Nazis had invaded Britain.
And now I’m off to cook the dinner and hopefully read some more of Les Miserables in my new copy (I’m only up to page 164).

The Sunday Salon

Published on by Margaret19 Comments
This is my first post for the Sunday Salon and I feel very much ‘œthe new girl’. I’™m the 99th member so there are many experienced members and I’™m feeling quite shy. I’™ve read the notes on what to do so here goes.

This morning I read a few pages of Elizabeth Gilbert’™s Eat, Pray, Love. I’™m not terrible impressed with it so far and I don’™t think I’™ll finish it as it’™s a library book and someone else has reserved it and I have to return it next by Wednesday. I’™m still in the ‘œeating’ part, which is in Italy. The first few chapters explain the background to Elizabeth Gilbert’™s reasons for travelling and it is her depression and despair that I found hard going. Now she is in Italy it’™s beginning to grab my attention and this morning I read her account of going to watch a football match between Lazio and Roma. Apparently Italian men go to a bakery after their team has lost a match and cheer themselves up by standing about leaning on their motorcycles, ‘œtalking about the game, looking macho as anything, and eating cream puffs.’ I must remember to suggest this to my husband and son the next time their team, Manchester United, loses. Fortunately that’™s not today because they beat Aston Villa 4 ‘“0 yesterday. I hope the Italians will be eating cream puffs (and there will be no violence) on Tuesday when Manchester United are playing Roma in Rome.

What else am I reading? Yesterday I started to read Penelope Lively’™s Consequences. I’™ve yet to read one of her books and be disappointed and so far this is living up to my expectations. It starts in 1935 when two young people, Lorna and Matt meet quite by chance in St James’™s Park in London. They come from very different backgrounds but are instantly attracted to each other and despite opposition from Lorna’™s parents they get married. As the title indicates the predominant theme of this book is how events follow on from chance meetings and how our lives are changed because of the decisions we make. For some time now I’™ve been interested in the Second World War period and from my reading of this book so far it sets the scene and captures the atmosphere of the pre-war and early war years. There is a nostalgic feel to the settings, looking back to how things were and how the war inevitably changed people’™s lives and expectations.

This morning I’™ve read some more. Lorna and Matt have had a daughter, Molly, the war began and Matt was called up. I won’™t say too much as I don’™t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’™t read it. This book is just so good, I can’™t praise it enough. It’™s full of such quotable extracts, such as this in defining happiness Lorna realises that it is ‘œanother condition, of a different quality, a state of being that lifts you above ordinary existence, that pervades every moment, that confers immunity.’

Later in my reading this morning I came to the section when Molly having gone through university, takes a job as a librarian ‘œbecause someone had left a copy of the Evening Standard in the tube’ advertising the job and she thought why not? Thus setting in motion another train of events. But the bits that I particularly like in this section are the descriptions of the library and of books (I used to be a librarian). Here are just a few examples:

‘œFiction is one strident lie ‘“ or rather, many competing lies; history is a long narrative of argument and reassessment; travel shouts of self-promotion; biography is just pushing a product. As for autobiography ‘¦’

‘œThat is the function of books: they offer a point of view, they offer many conflicting points of view, they provoke thought, they provoke irritation and admiration and speculation. They take you out of yourself and put you down somewhere else from whence you never entirely return.’

‘œThe surface repose of a library is a cynical deception.’

That’™s all for now. More thoughts later on today.