Inspired by the Mookse and Gripes podcast, with their latest episode entitled Our Nightstands, Ourselves, I decided to take a long hard look at what they call nightstand and what I call bedside table (but their version is shorter, so I’ll use that for the rest of this post).
Before I get started, I have to admit that my current nightstand is a compromise. It is no longer the generously proportioned nightstand (in fact, two of them) that I had back in Britain: one housing some of my lifelong favourites such as Tove Jansson, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys and Shirley Jackson, the other housing my current reads plus some assorted Russians (the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva particularly prominent amongst them).
Because of the miniature proportions of my Berlin bedroom, I have actually inherited my older son’s nightstand, which is just about big enough for a pile of current and future reads. But, if I’m honest, when I turn around at night on occasion and shift a pillow, a book or two (and the hand cream) have been known to fall with a thud. I may have to consider another table at some point, one that is long and thin, as I have more space on the side but not really much in depth.
I’ll explore the books in more detail in a minute, but what else is going on in the chaos of my nightstand. I apologise for the mess, but I have been in bed with the flu for most of the week!
In addition to the books, on top of the nightstands I have of course my reading lamp (I have another one poised over my reading couch in the library/study which is better for reading, but this one has a warmer glow). Dangling from the lamp is a little cloth bag from Petit Bateau that I got back when I was living in France and which contains some treasured memories, such as the boys’ letters to Santa Claus. There is a brush for Kasper, who will jump on the bed to be brushed as soon as I pick it up (he has other brushes in other reading places). Bookmarks, of course, although there are a few spares in the drawer. And the hand and foot cream which has become indispensable since I started working in retail.
In the drawer I have tissues, medicine and a rubber band for doing some exercises when my hip gets really painful. On the lower shelf I have my diary (woefully neglected at present) and a couple of magazines which I’ve only skimmed through but keep meaning to read – my last magazine as a Tate member and a monthly magazine about all that is going on in Berlin called (somewhat unfortunately to an English ear) TipBerlin.
There is a book that I’ve had on there since early December and I haven’t really picked it up since January, but I am reluctant to move it back to the bookshelves. I keep telling myself I will get around to it eventually. It’s Platonov’s Chevengur – which I’m sure will be worth finishing but it’s so darn long!
The other books fall roughly into my 20 Books of Summer category, partly because my reading has really slowed down recently, and my reviewing even more so, so I need a bit of a lead. In preparation for my China trip, I feel like in addition to a fairly recent academic one Knowing China by Frank Pieke, published by Cambridge University Press, I should also finally get around to reading Red Sorghum. I believe I saw the film soon after its release back in Communist times, but can’t remember much about it, other than that it covered similar themes to a lot of Romanian cinema and books of that period.
But before I head off to the Far East, I still want to explore my new home, so two books set in Berlin are also on the nightstand: Russian Disco by Wladimir Kaminer (an immigrant like me) and Berlin Blues by a German author Sven Regener, both full of anecdotes about the weird and wonderful people you meet in Berlin.
I’m also looking forward to reading more Romanian women authors for possible future translation pitches: Dora Pavel and Laura Ilea are the two that are currently on my nightstand. Bottled Goods is a novella-in-flash by Romanian-born but writing in English author Sophie Van Llewyn and is set in Romania during the 1970s.
There is also a Japanese book A Woman of Pleasure by Kiyoko Murata, translated by the late great Juliet Winters Carpenter, one of the few on my shelves that I haven’t got around to reading yet, which will certainly fit into the Women in Translation Month category.
Last but not least, please admire my Kiki’s Delivery Service diary which I bought at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka back in 2023. I loved it so much that even after 2024 was over, I kept the cover and just keep replacing the diaries inside – only Japanese ones will fit, but luckily there are quite a few stationery shops selling Japanese items here in Berlin. Yes, I know people use their phone nowadays for appointments and notes and the like, but I still love my paper diary.
Speaking of phones, I think one of the reasons for my drop in reading recently is the phone. I know it’s a waste of time to scroll on Twitter and Bluesky (I don’t have Instagram or any other social media installed on it), that it’s no longer even very useful for Corylus Books, because the book world has fragmented. But I still find myself just quickly checking one thing, which leads to another, which leads to me raising my head an hour or two later and realising that I’ve done nothing constructive.
For example I see Slow Travel Berlin post something about walking the length of the Landwehrkanal, which I intend to do one day, and I click on the link. Then I start wondering what’s on at the Neue Nationagalerie, so I check out their website, or else I realise I’ve forgotten the architect of the famous Shell House, so I search for him. That leads to me wondering when and where exactly an earlier Berlin architect, the renowned Schinkel, built the churches for the so-called northern suburbs, including two in my neighbourhood. Then I remember that between the Nazareth Church and the other church built on Leopoldplatz there is a bit of a park which is now notorious for being full of druggies and drug-dealers, so I check out any news about recent initiatives to improve the area. Then I remember that I’m also involved in the local clean-up initiatives (cleaning up rubbish rather than drugs, to be clear), so I go to see what activities are planned for next month. But then I suddenly remember that the open air cinema is now open, so I check out the programme…
Well, you get the idea. I should leave the phone out of my bedroom, I guess.
Finally, another thing that no longer has room on my nightstand, so has moved to the windowsill: my small collection of cuddly toys. My boys had a vast collection of those and would never want to give any of them to charity (they took some of them with them to university and I was finally allowed to get rid of the rest while moving). I used to smile indulgently and think they’d outgrow them, just like I did… until Zoe died. In those 18 or so months between Zoe and Kasper, I found those cute cuddly toys (most of them acquired in Japan at Studio Ghibli) very comforting. Perhaps they also compensated a little for my sons going off to university. And Kasper has allowed them to live on untoppled, unscratched and unbothered.
findingtimetowrite 