Reading Matters

Scene from a book #10

The houses grew scruffier as I turned on to Shepherd's Bush Road and the traffic grew louder, car windows rolled down and hip hop bouncing into the street. I passed the Thai supermarket; the little old lady at the till by the door looked up and recognised me. She smiled and I waved. This was my patch -- past the off licence, delicatessen and newsagent's. Brook Green stretched out of the left, the parched plane trees dropping their skin-coloured leaves where a group of tramps and drunks always gathered on two benches facing one another. You could smell them from a few metres away. The same lone woman was usually in their midst. She was worn but ageless, thin in tight jeans, with white flaking skin and thick Afro hair. I crossed the street if I ever saw her walking towards me, asking for money. I guess it was her patch too.

The Book: The Saffron Kitchen by Yasmin Crowther, page 9.

The photograph [click to enlarge]: Shepherd's Bush Road, looking towards Brook Green, which is my patch, too. Photo taken by kimbofo, 12 March 2005.

Scene from a book #9

Down by the river at Hammersmith Bridge, legally in his lunch hour, Christie fed the birds with hamfat from from the quarter he bought at the narrow shop next to the cinema in the Broadway. The lean he ate. Sparrows there were on the roof of a houseboat moored by the wall, pigeons on the paving, and gulls in the air, wheeling and screaming, gwylan to wail, as is their way, I repeat myself.

The book: Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry by B. S. Johnson, page 41.

The photograph [click to enlarge]: The Mall, Hammersmith, looking towards Hammersmith Bridge. Photo taken by kimbofo on January 5, 2006.

Scene from a book #8

We reached the riverside and turned right, passed the red-brick mansion block and the boat clubs. It looked barren, abandoned by the weekend crowd of rowers and boozers. The traffic rumbled over the bridge, glorious khaki green and gold in the late afternoon, shadows and light playing off the water.

The Book: The Saffron Kitchen by Yasmin Crowther, page 11.

The photograph [click to enlarge]: Hammersmith Bridge, which spans the River Thames in west London, was opened on 11 June 1887. Designed by civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette, it is 700ft long and 43ft wide. I recently discovered that the green and gold colour scheme is a reference to the Harrods Department Store corporate colour scheme (the former Harrods Depository which has now been turned into a residential complex is nearby), but I don't know how true that is. The bridge was famously damaged by an IRA terrorist bomb in 2000. Photo taken by kimbofo, 26 December 2006.

Scene from a book #7

Elsinore.

She saw stone flagged floors and echoing halls; shadows in which spies could lurk. Always wind and outside drifting, shifting sea and sand, long acres of mournful sand. A very uncomfortable play. I think we should all be cold, always drawn towards heaped fires and safety from the wind.

The Book: Two Moons by Jennifer Johnston, page 48.

The photograph [click to enlarge]: Helsingor (pronounced Elsinore) is a picturesque town in Denmark, north of Copenhagen, best known for being the "home" of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The 16th century castle -- Kronborg Slot or Elsinore Castle -- is where the drama was set. Photo taken by kimbofo, 4 August 2005.

Click to see more photographs of the castle and the town.

Scene from a book #6

And then, passing close to the Statue of Liberty, off to the right, how big it is, high on the pedestal, green folds of the robe and thickness of the upraised arm, the bright gold of the torch turning red in the slanting sun.

The book: Between Two Rivers by Nicholas Rinaldi, page 90.

The photograph [click to enlarge]: The Statue of Liberty in the pissing down rain as seen from the Circle Line Tour boat. Photo taken by kimbofo, 14 October 2005.

Scene from a book #5

She  followed the calle down to a wooden bridge. On either side of the narrow canal washing lines stretched between the high buildings and looking down she saw knickers, petticoats, jumpers, overalls, perfectly reflected in the dull green water. Boats covered in tarpaulins, roped and tied across like parcels, were moored along the buildings' weedy sides.

The book: Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers, page 207.

The photograph [click to enlarge]: The exact same place in Venice -- on the bridge that leads to the Jewish Ghetto -- that Vickers describes in the quote above. Photo taken by kimbofo, 31 October 2006.

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Click to see more photographs of this scene on my other blog.

Scene from a book #4

"Aren't miracles strange?" Casey suddenly pondered. "Plane-loads off to Lourdes every summer and they say the amount of cures there are a terror. And every cure has to be certified, so there can be no hookery."

"There's no cod and it's recognised by Rome," Brennan said.

"Fatima's recognised too and isn't it strange that with all its cures they never recognised Knock."

"A man was cured of paralysis one Sunday I was there," Brennan said, he and Casey the only two left in the conversation. "We were walkin' round and round the church and sayin' the rosary when a sort of grasp went up: there was a cure. A sandy little man, no more than forty; he just got up out of his wheel-chair and walked as if there was never a tap on him."

The book: The Barracks by John McGahern, page 173.

The photograph [click to enlarge]: Knock Shrine, County Mayo, Ireland. The Marian Shrine was not recognised by Rome until Pope John Paul II made a personal pilgrimage to the site in 1979. McGahern's book was written in 1963. Photo taken by kimbofo, December 2005.

Scene from a book #3

Several times Lucy combined walking and a carriage ride to travel from Stepney to Kew Gardens. She stood in the glass and iron palm house and gazed at peepuls, pepper-vines, tree-plants and palms, remembering India. The pavillion looked like the product of a whimsy or the emanation of a dream; its rainforest light, its population of tropical plants garnered from all points on the equator, existed in unnatural deiance of the nature around it.

The book: Sixty Lights by Gail Jones, page 192.

The photograph [click to enlarge]: The Palm House at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Taken by kimbofo on May 2005.

Scene from a book #2

 

La Pyramide.The new entrance to the Paris Louvre had become almost as famous as the museum itself. The controversial, neomodern glass pyramid designed by Chinese-born American architect I.M. Pei still evoked scorn from traditionalists who felt it destroyed the dignity of the Renaissance courtyard. Goethe had described architecture as frozen music, and Pei's critics described the pyramid as fingernails on a chalkboard. Progressive admirers, though, hailed Pei's seventy-one-foot-tall transparent pyramid as a dazzling synergy of ancient structure and modern method - a symbolic link between the old and new - helping usher the Louvre into the next millennium.

The book: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, page 35.

The photograph [click to enlarge]: The glass pyramid of the Louvre taken from inside the world-famous art gallery in April 1999.

Scene from a book #1

His head, which he took to Trumper's to be shaved every other day - hair, he said, is fur no human being should tolerate - was a perfect polished egg, and he wore those big heavy spectacles favoured by tycoons of the time, with flanged ear-pieces and lenses the size of saucers in which his sharp little eyes darted like inquisitive, exotic fish.

The book: The Sea by John Banville, page 102.

The photograph [click to enlarge]: Trumper barber shop, Curzon Street, Mayfair. According to the official website it was established in 1875 and "has served the needs of London gentlemen and members of the Royal Court for over 125 years". Taken November 2004.