On my bedside table

What I've been reading!

Happy Saturday, friends. I thought today that I would share one of my semi-regular “On my bedside table” posts, wherein I write a little bit about what books I’ve been reading for pleasure lately. But before I do, I have to share the most exciting thing that happened this week: I saw the Northern Lights!

Where I live in Scotland is known to be a good spot for the Northern Lights, and so ever since I moved here in 2014 I have kept an eye out. For a long while I even had an app downloaded that would send me notifications every time solar activity experienced a bump. This summer, there was a wonderful display of Northern Lights, but it happened to be right after I had returned from Paris, and so I was peacefully in bed and sound asleep at 9:30PM. I thought I had missed my chance.

But on Thursday, I got a light show from my very own balcony. Later, I saw that friends and family in the US had seen the Northern Lights across southern America, from Texas to North Carolina. There is something wonderful to me about seeing everyone else’s pictures, the way we all instinctually stand in watch at this natural wonder. We fall into line like lemmings, eyes drawn up from the earth to this unpredictable, spectral mystery. Beauty orients us around itself.

Alright, now to books! This month’s round up is a mixed bag: The Goldfinch by Donna Tart, Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell, and Waverley by Sir Walter Scott. I can’t recommend any of them without some qualifications, and yet I have deeply enjoyed and admired the writing within them. Without further ado…

My micro-reviews…

Waverley by Sir Walter Scott