I learnt a new expression late last year: “the scholar’s mistress.” What it means is the pile of books that accumulate beside the bed, books that you are reading, plan to read, ought to have read, might read again.
At my house, the dog’s kennel does for a nightstand. Note highlighter pen at the ready. Also — right-most pile, lower — a stack of academic journals.
It is time to talk about some of these books—short reviews, quick comments, whatever. Then maybe some of them can move on to their new book-lives, while others can stay there at the bedside longer for re-visiting.
Watch this space.
I am always suspicious when I go into someone’s house and there are no books, magazines, etc. anywhere!
In his novel Our Lady of Darkness, Fritz Leiber has an array of books and magazines and such heaped on the protagonist’s bed animate as a
paramental being. As I recall, a feminine and kinda wild one. This scenario of animated, wild, sorta feminine books cavorting in chaos has
freaked me out ever since.
I hadn’t made any connection to a scholar’s mistress, either. (I look to Muses…) But books are dangerous in many dimensions and realms of awareness–including the erotic…and wild!
Pitch, I vaguely remember that Fritz Lieber thing with the books — funny, I was just recently thinking that I should go back and re-read some of his and see how they held up decades later.