Beech Trees

The early settlers in this colony greatly missed—that is, those who had eyes for such things—the change of the seasons which marked the year in the land of their birth, and which helped so greatly to diversify their life in the old home. They noticed that the weather got colder as the Autumn waned and the Winter came on, and again as the days lengthened there was a gradual increase in warmth; but the erratic nature of our climate, which often gives us an Indian summer in mid-winter and then freezes us up in the middle or end of our Spring, took away from the sharpness of the impression, and Nature helped but little to deepen it.

Quotation from:  A New Zealand Naturalist’s Calendar: and notes by the wayside by George Malcolm Thomson. Dunedin, 1909

No doubt therefore this is why the early settlers planted European beech trees, seen here in full autumn glory. Compare with the New Zealand native Southern beech tree to the left of this picture.

Common Gestures

They are all common gestures: pulling the glasses out of a case, cleaning them with a tissue or the hem of the blouse or the tip of the tie, perching them on the nose and steadying them behind the ears before peering at the now lucid page held in front of us. Then pushing them up or sliding them down the glistening bridge of the nose in order to bring the letters into focus and, after a while, lifting them off and rubbing the skin between the eyebrows, screwing the eyelids shut to keep out the siren text. And the final act: taking them off, folding them and inserting them between the pages of the book to mark the place where we left off reading for the night.

A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel, London, Penguin, 2014, p.291

Judging a book

My hands, choosing a book to take to bed or to the reading-desk, for the train or for a gift, consider the form as much as the content. Depending on the occasion, depending on the place where I’ve chosen to read, I prefer something small and cosy or ample and substantial. Books declare themselves through their titles, their authors, their places in a catalogue or on a bookshelf, the illustrations of their jackets; books also declare themselves through their size. At different times in different places I have come to expect certain books to look a certain way, and, as in all fashions, these changing features fix a precise quality onto a book’s definition. I judge a book by its covers; I judge a book by its shape.

A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel, London, Penguin, 2014, p.125