Books to save your sanity

[WOM]

Yup. That's the one. I assume you've read it? A writer called Robert Service has shown up in this and a couple of other places recently, and seems to be utterly revered and it's assumed that the reader knows who he is. I'd never heard of him. Is he someone that's just automatically read in Canadian schools?

The first thing I ever recall reading and having to recite in school was The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service.

In fact, it's probably the first (and only) poem I've read with my kids - and more than one time, too.

[MsD]

I don't want to read any more harrowing books; I feel I've put in my time there, and I get very upset and haunted.

Dystopian novels are, as noted, outstripped by "real" life every fucking day.

Should have learnt with Black Beauty that I can't read anything that involves cruelty to animals but I still went and read Steinbeck.

A friend recommends Nabokov, whom I've avoided because Lolita, as a writer whose art transcends the subject matter.

Hawksmoor has been started and put aside because I've been moving etc. Should pick it up again.