A Good Read

I'm reading Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale.' This is my first reading of the book. Is it why I'm feeling so down?

That's the thing about good literature. It does affect our mood. It seeps into us and we walk around, maybe not with anything concrete from the book in our minds, but a sense of difference. A question. Why do I feel like this? We may tend not to put it down to what we are reading, but it could simply be that.

Good literature can affect our view of the world, the way we think, the way we look at other people, other places. It makes us more understanding. Makes us angry, defiant.
Makes us believe. Makes us laugh.

Like music, it changes our mood, enriches, transforms, educates.

'The Handmaid's Tale' gives us information in drips. They accumulate, grow and increase. It doesn't spoonfeed. For that I am very grateful.
And it is not self important and pompous in its length. I really dislike books that pad themselves out and say, 'Aren't I important and clever because I'm so BIG.'
A good book is modest. It doesn't need to do that. Every word is there for a purpose and it doesn't sledge hammer or waffle or repeat pointlessly and annoyingly and it doesn't let the reader down.

And I love the pages. They are silkly smooth, slighly off white, you flick your fingers over the edges and they turn easily, no sticking. The cover is hard and the image intriguing. But most of all it is the feel of the pages I like. Touch. Back to touch. It is so important. Books to hold in the hand. To feel.


And it's raining, raining for three days. As it Thomas Hardy novels, the weather suits the mood of the character.