I've just emerged from my room after three days' illness. Nothing life threatening, just enough to provide a welcome break from work and domestic life, and to keep me in bed most of the time. I was quite happy there, with a bowl of fruit salad, herbal tea and pile of books for company. Certainly it was very nice to have all that time to read.
But read what? The poor addled brain doesn't want anything too difficult, so you have to be able to dip into the books as you are likely to lose concentration quite quickly. On the other hand, you require something stimulating enough to divert you from your symptoms.
This time, I read the memoir Soho in the Fifties by Dan Farson and a biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Both were very enjoyable. But I thought it might be a useful exercise in this sickly time of year to come up with an all-time top 10 books to be ill with.
1. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - a pleasure to read for the rich humour and the linguistic flair of Holmes and, of course, the plots.
2. The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton - it's always cheering to learn of other people's misery, and Burton's book, 700 pages of scholarly reflection on depression, also makes you feel clever just for reading it.
3. Palgrave's Golden Treasury - being ill is the ideal state for reading poetry. You can read a few stanzas and drift off into netherworlds.
4. Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome - a work of genius that still makes me laugh out loud, more than 100 years after it was written.
5. Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov - the great Russian novel, whose hero's outstanding characteristic is his deep laziness. Contains the best doctor's note ever written.
6. Coleridge: Early Visions by Richard Holmes - one of the great literary biographies, Early Visions is packed with anecdote and insight on the laudanum-soaked poet who remains quite a sad figure.
7. Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms and Autobiographical Writings by Walter Benjamin - a treasure trove of delights for the weary mind, from the great wandering critic and collector.
8. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson - a comforting world of physical disability and drunkenness.
9. Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak - when Max is sent to his room, he conjures up a strange world of monsters that may not be unlike the demons of your bed-bound delirium.
10. Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu - when ill you are liable to get, like, philosophical, and this is the great classic of Taoist thought, which proposes lying in bed as the way forward.
Do you have any to add?
