This time last year a popular meme did the rounds. I liked it so much I’m doing it again. To take part, just quote the first sentence from your first post for every month of the last year. Here’s mine. They say time goes quicker as you grow older; I say it goes quicker still when you blog.
January
Jakob Nielsen has been delivering articles to my inbox for some time now.
February
Stone circles, strange cults, mankind in danger and an alien menace.
March
Steerpike was aware, directly he had entered the terrible room, that he was behaving strangely.
April
After dealing with travel sickness and a neighbour’s over concern about the height of my lawn, I am now back online.
May
My posts are becoming increasingly serious lately so a meme to lighten things up.
June
After looking forward so much to reading Don De Lillo’s Falling Man I’m unable to hide my bitter disappointment in the novel.
July
You may be familiar with my recent frustration on discovering that Microsoft Vista is incompatible with my beloved home wireless network.
August
In Life Class Pat Barker revisits the setting of the First World War, the ugly moment in history she so excellently helped to document in her Regeneration trilogy written ten or so years ago.
September
I’ve been a latecomer to the fiction of Irvine Welsh.
October
The air is crisp and there is a definite chill in my bones.
November
That long-drawn, wavering howl has, for all its fearful resonance, some inherent sadness in it, as if the beasts would love to be less beastly if only they knew how and never cease to mourn their own condition.
December
This is a segment from the 1972 film Tales from the Crypt, featuring Joan Collins as a murderous housewife who gets her just desserts.
This is a segment from the 1972 film Tales from the Crypt, featuring Joan Collins as a murderous housewife who gets her just desserts. Silly and suitably seasonal.
Do you get on a roll when you read, so that one book leads to the next, which leads to the next, and so on and so on?
I always claim to stumble from book to book, although when I look back at the trail behind me I can usually spot a pattern.
I’m currently reading the latest novel by Clive Barker, which is probably because I’ve been reading a lot of Neil Gaiman recently, although I wasn’t really thinking of anything when I bought the Barker book. I just subconsciously decided to widen my appreciation of the ghostly and supernatural to include a taste of horror. And what probably got me onto this path was Nicola Barker’s Darkmans, which has a supernatural element and was nominated for the 2007 Booker Prize. Because I’d read both this and Ian McEwan’s latest, the Booker theme continued when I bought The Gathering by Anne Enright – the eventual winner. But I must confess that I hated the book, so sometimes rolls don’t work out.
Usually planned reading directions don’t work out for me either. I finished Albert Camus and wanted to read Kafka, but the plan went nowhere. I put Kafka away again for another day. Even when I find an author I love I can’t read too many of their books in one go; their power gets diluted. This year it’s happened with Cormac McCarthy, Graham Greene and Sebastian Faulks. Sometimes my roll goes no further than picking up the next unread book on my shelf, other times it’s picking up a tip from another blog. More often than not it’s just luck and chance.
