I'm not writing much because we're full-on with ordering and there are other less useful and less pleasant crises happening besides. More snow today too - everyone I meet is groaning!

A friend told me firmly last week that 'Happiness is a choice.' Not that she is a good advertisment (always needing to emote long and loud, always about to slit her wrists, always drinking too much, has taken up smoking recently..) but I think it's a right thought anyway. It's a quotation from Neil Donald Walsh, Author of 'Conversations With God' which I'm told is VG. (I could have a thing or two to say to the old B.**.r if I got the chance - God not Walsh.)

My reading has been mostly Swedish crime writers - Åsa Larsson, 'The Black Path' which I didn't enjoy much after setting out with hope. Too much about crimes within the financial markets (futures etc.) that I couldn't be bothered to follow and too much brutish violence - I prefer a bit of detecting, or at least a bit of suspense. Mari Jungstedt 'Unspoken' is rather better but it took me while to get focused, maybe the fault of goings on here rather than the book. Whilst I'm on the subject of swedish crime, I realy dislike Kenneth Branagh as Wallander and I dislike the way it has been directed. KB has the fleshy, petulant face of an ageing queen. Whilst having similar body proportions and fleshiness the Swedish actor Krister Henriksson is much more masculine, much more in control, doesn't keep rushing into places with no back-up and is visibly part of a team. The directing of the BBC version accentuates W's melancholy to a ridiculous degree, it's all about Wallander, the other characters are ill-defined and seem almost superfluous. I scarcely know who's who.

One of my Christmas presents was "Outside of a Dog: A Bibliomemoir." by Rick Gekoski. I enjoyed that very much. The first chapter took me on a trip down memory lane through the books of my teenage years. For instance I took in 'Catcher in the Rye' when I was 15 so that was about right and though I was mystified by it - my reading had been mainly conventional English stuff (not even any Scots authors that I can remember, so I say that deliberately) and my very English village background (not Midsummer obviously or I wouldn't be here to tell the tale) left me ill-fitted to understand anything American but I could tell it was important - seminal even. I wasn't sure what Holden was moaning about and was startled when he ended up in a psychiatric ward, again very outside my experience, but that's what books are for. Showing us other lives. I remember reading Truman Capote, Norman Mailer and Hunter S. Thompson with the same puzzlement, and lack of enjoyment if I'm honest, but with a willingness to be educated.

Somewhere Gekoski quotes Wittgenstein " "If a lion could talk we wouldn't understand him."' However hard we might try to become profficient in Lionish he is a lion and I am not. I have none of his experiences and though I may intuit his appetite when he looks at me I can never experience it or empathise with him. Forms of language are inextricable with forms of experience and meaning is matter of context. (Most of that is quoted from the books but I can't remember exactly what as I had jotted it into a notebook from which I'm now copying.) Anyway, it exonerated me from liking or fully appreciating those American writers I don't feel any kinship with - or indeed any writer, of whatever nationality. As I get older I am more and more reluctant to try anything new which is silly, but what is much more positive is that I don't feel obliged to finish what I don't like.

Gekoski made me laugh with his comments on Yeats: "Amongst his earlier works he edited collections like 'Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry' and steeped himslf in Celtic lore. ...This obsession with the world of druids and mythological Celtic figures can cause a softening of the brain, and has been known to lead to the compulsive singing of songs and even (in extreme cases) to vegetarianism."

Fact is, I really like it that Yeats was so interested in mysticism, spiritualism, occultism, and astrology. Also that he was influenced by the writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg and involved in Hinduism and Theosophy, but there you are - each to his own. Yeats is one of my etheric heroes.

Gekoski I also consider a hero because he speaks well of Agatha Christie whose novels saw him through a bad time after his marriage break-up. He admits they are badly written (well, he would have to wouldn't he, in the way that we teachers were meant to frown on Enid Blyton) but Aggie has great plots. Her writing isn't always bad either (that's my opinion not TG's) I've happened across some quite lyrical passges and some wisdom too.