Good morning, readers and book lovers! We have no contributing diarist this morning, so you'll have to put up with me in an open forum instead. But before we begin with today’s burning question, please allow me to point out that December contains four Fridays and we have no volunteers yet! Two of our number have kindly volunteered to contribute diaries for November 22 and November 29th, so we're good for the rest of this month.
But everyone else--swallow those energy pills, throw the TV out the window, and unhook the wi-fi connection so you can write a diary about a book that changed your life! Here’s how:
In the first paragraph, all you need to do is introduce the title of the book and the author, and mention the circumstances in which you encountered it—did you buy it, borrow it, or receive it as a gift? How old were you? Were you at school still or working?
In the second paragraph, you could provide a quote from the book, or briefly describe the contents, or tell something about the author. If it’s a classic and has been reproduced on line as part of The Gutenberg Project, you could provide a link. Or if there’s an entry in Wikipedia about it, you could link to that.
In the third paragraph, you would state how reading the book changed your life—by making you aware of politics, or history, or seeing the world beyond your own cosmos of home, family, friends, and school, or thinking about things in a new way.
You will need to add at least three tags to the bottom of your diary: Readers and Book Lovers, R&BLers, and Books That Changed My Life. Feel free to add more, according to your subject.
So which book changed YOUR life?
The Kama Sutra? Really--are you a professional contortionist? Oh, wait, no, perhaps you really meant
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask. You can talk about any book as long as it changed your life, even
How to Make an American Quilt.
Please kosmail me and tell me you’ll do a diary in December so this series won’t vanish up the chimney!
I'm feeling a bit nutty this morning so for your delectation we have freshly baked almond croissants, chocolate-hazelnut spread to put on them if you're inclined to spoil the Egyptians, and hazelnut coffee with half-and-half and demerara sugar. Yummy. Help yourself, lick the crumbs off your sensitive, well-shaped mouth, and let's proceed.
An entirely too inquisitive child, I loved to poke around my father’s bookshelves when I was growing up, finding literature I wasn’t supposed to read. Thus it was I encountered two books which, in the 1950s, would have been considered very naughty indeed. One was Ancient Manners (a.k.a. Aphrodite) by Pierre Louys, and one was The Book of the Thousand and One Nights by Sir Richard Burton (not Ms. Taylor’s husband, but you probably already know that). The setting for one was ancient Alexandria in Egypt, and for the other the Middle East of medieval times—or perhaps even before that period.
Aphrodite is a slow read for modern readers who are used to a fast pace, but my family didn’t even have television in those days so I had a great deal of spare time on my hands. Basically, I accepted everything I read about—courtesans, lesbianism, and so forth—without questioning it. “The Songs of Bilitis” I found interesting but they didn’t leave any special mark on my mind, other than these unusual opening words: “Listen, little filth,…”
BOOK THE FIRST
I
Chrysis
She lay upon her bosom, with her elbows in front of her, her legs wide apart and her cheek resting on her hand, pricking, with a long golden pin, small symmetrical holes in a pillow of green linen.
Languid with too much sleep, she had remained alone upon the disordered bed ever since she had awakened, two hours after mid-day.
The great waves of her hair, her only garment, covered one of her sides.
This hair was resplendently opaque, soft as fur, longer than a bird's wing, supple, uncountable, full of life and warmth. It covered half her back, flowed under her naked belly, glittered under her knees in thick, curling clusters. The young woman was enwrapped in this precious fleece. It glinted with a russet sheen, almost metallic, and had procured her the name of Chrysis, given her by the courtesans of Alexandria.
It was not the sleek hair of the court-woman from Syria, or the dyed hair of the Asiatics, or the black and brown hair of the daughters of Egypt. It was the hair of an Aryan race, the Galilæans across the sands.
Chrysis. She loved the name. The young men who came to see her called her Chryse like Aphrodite, in the verses they laid at her door, with rose-garlands, in the morning. She did not believe in Aphrodite, but she liked to be compared to the goddess, and she went to the temple sometimes, in order to give her, as to a friend, boxes of perfumes and blue veils.
The Book of the Thousand and One Nights was much more interesting, as it contained drawings. One showed a beautiful woman fast asleep on a low divan, like a day bed. She was wearing only her own hair, which fortunately for the Board of Censors covered the more delicate parts of her anatomy. Again, I simply accepted what I read about without thinking about it much—high-born women cavorting with men of a much lower social station and getting into untold trouble, and so on. I also liked the language in it: “In the name of Allah, the Compassionating, the Compassionate” is the book’s opening line.
THE ARABIAN NIGHTS
Sir Richard Burton, translator
1850
THE ARABIAN NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS
(ALF LAYLAH WA LAYLAH)
STORY OF KING SHAHRYAR AND HIS BROTHER
In the Name of Allah,
the Compassionating, the Compassionate!
PRAISE BE TO ALLAH - THE BENEFICENT KING - THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE - LORD OF THE THREE WORLDS - WHO SET UP THE FIRMAMENT WITHOUT PILLARS IN ITS STEAD - AND WHO STRETCHED OUT THE EARTH EVEN AS A BED - AND GRACE, AND PRAYER-BLESSING BE UPON OUR LORD MOHAMMED - LORD OF APOSTOLIC MEN - AND UPON HIS FAMILY AND COMPANION TRAIN -PRAYER AND BLESSINGS ENDURING AND GRACE WHICH UNTO THE DAY OF DOOM SHALL REMAIN - AMEN! - O THOU OF THE THREE WORLDS SOVEREIGN!
AND AFTERWARD. Verily the works and words of those gone before us have become instances and examples to men of our modern day, that folk may view what admonishing chances befell other folk and may therefrom take warning; and that they may peruse the annals of antique peoples and all that hath betided them, and be thereby ruled and restrained. Praise, therefore, be to Him who hath made the histories of the past an admonition unto the present! Now of such instances are the tales called "A Thousand Nights and a Night," together with their far-famed legends and wonders.
Therein it is related (but Allah it is All-knowing of His hidden things and All-ruling and All-honored and All-giving and All-gracious and All-merciful!) that in tide of yore and in time long gone before, there was a King of the Kings of the Banu Sasan in the islands of India and China, a Lord of armies and guards and servants and dependents. He left only two sons, one in the prime of manhood and the other yet a youth, while both were knights and braves, albeit the elder was a doughtier horseman than the younger. So he succeeded to the empire, when he ruled the land and lorded it is over his lieges with justice so exemplary that he was beloved by all the peoples of his capital and of his kingdom. His name was King Shahryar, and he made his younger brother, Shah Zaman hight, King of Samarkand in Barbarian land. These two ceased not to abide in their several realms and the law was ever carried out in their dominions. And each ruled his own kingdom with equity and fair dealing to his subjects, in extreme solace and enjoyment, and this condition continually endured for a score of years.
Delicacy forbids my reproducing the more interesting bits in what is, after all, a family-friendly blog; however, this kind of erotica appeals to me much more than porn because there are characters, unusual settings, even poetry to be found in these pages.
So, what arouses your interest and titillates your imagination? Tell us—we’re all ears!