From the Bookroom

In 'From the Bookroom' Glenkens-based author of the novel The Road From Damascus and co-author of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War, Robin Yassin-Kassab, takes readers through some of his favourite books. In this edition Robin speaks about author Khaled Khalifa, friendship and the festive season.

What am I reading at the moment? I have a long answer for you...

First there’s The Human Cosmos: A Secret History of the Stars, by Jo Marchant. This was a Christmas present from my daughter. I’ve read the prologue and part of the first chapter. It’s interesting and engagingly written, so I may well keep going.

And I’m reading Daemonologie, In Forme of a Dialogue, by King James I and VI – a text which is either ‘of a different age’ or just plainly insane, depending on the charity of your outlook. It greatly contributed to the witch burning hysteria that took so many women’s lives in previous centuries, particularly in Scotland. It reminds me of poor Elspeth McEwan, the ‘witch’ of Balmaclellan, whose story is told in Alan Temperley’s Tales of Galloway.

This unusual book was a present from my son. I’ve read some pages, and it will be good to read some more, if only I find the time.

But time is in short supply. I have too much work. Two half-read books on my desk are related to one of my jobs – I’ll tell you more about that in the summer… They are The Rule of Violence: Subjectivity, Memory and Government in Syria by Salwa Ismail, and Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law by Rudolph Peters. Both are fascinating in their own ways, but they’re academic in tone, and the first one is grisly. I can only read a little in one sitting.

I’m reading a book of strange and intricate poetry by Jorge Luis Borges – better known for his strange and intricate short stories. Books of poetry, like academic books, I read slowly and intermittently.

And short stories too. I don’t just plough through them. I’m currently reading The Visiting Privilege, a collection by Joy Williams. Each story creates an unhinged little world which lives in my head for up to a week, until I need another.

I read one at a time, and let them seep slowly in. A quick injection, then a long effect.

I’m also reading the Flower Ornament Scripture. I’ve been reading it for years, a few pages every now and then. It’s so hallucinatory, so infinitely expansive, so enormously superlative, that I couldn’t do it otherwise.

I’m reading – or listening to – Finnegans Wake. Eternally. But that’s another matter.

Sometimes I hear a guilty voice telling me that I should read only one book at a time. That I should finish what I start – as if reading a book were like performing an office task, or eating the food on my plate. The voice states that having five or ten books on the go at once represents some kind of failure.

But I resist that voice. I reject its illogic.

I need plenty of books simultaneously, because books serve plenty of functions. Some are for falling asleep to, and some for waking up. Some to race through, others to slowly savour. Some fit certain rooms, or times of day, or moods.

Keep them at hand, everywhere. That’s my advice.