The Book Tower
debut novel coming soon

More novels lay scattered on the bedroom floor, abandoned and unread. Now one title has now saved me from the bookless mess. I wasn’t aware that we had a copy of We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver but there it was, already yellowing on the shelf.

At last a book I know I will finish. It’s inspired me to invest in some new purchases, which include:

• The Falling Man by Don DeLillo
• The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
• No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
• A Curious Earth by Gerard Woodward

The first three choices are no surprises if you’ve read any of my recent posts. Woodward’s novel is the third in a trilogy that began with August and continued with I’ll Go To Bed At Noon. Both excellent, so I’m looking forward to this one.

I just hope they arrrive in time for next week’s camping trip.

Comments [8]

From Booking Through Thursday:

It happens even to the best readers from time to time… you close the cover on the book you’re reading and discover, to your horror, that there’s nothing else to read. Either there’s nothing in the house, or nothing you’re in the mood for. Just, nothing that “clicks.” What do you do?? How do you get the reading wheels turning again?

It’s happening now. Help.

After a really good run I’ve suddenly become unsettled with my reading. Nothing is clicking. I tried and failed with Love in the Time of Cholera; it’s a decent enough book but I always found myself staring out of the window whenever I attempted to read it. I also abandoned American Psycho. I just didn’t like it, no matter how much the blurb on the back of the book tried to persuade me otherwise. All this – just in the last week – has send me into a downward spiral, scared to pick up another book in case I make it three failures in a row.

I’ve been here before but thankfully not very often. The mood will suddenly change and I will spot a couple of books on the shelf that grab my attention, read an enthusiastic review or succumb to a spending spree. I might even draw the blinds and get back to Love in the Time of Cholera.

The wheels will turn again, I’m sure of it.

Comments [9]

Following last week’s Reading in Public, a follow up meme from Booking Through Thursday. Where don’t you read?

Although I try to squeeze in a chapter or two at lunchtimes, I don’t read at work. Well, I do in a way, but it’s all work related, which tends to take the pleasure out of it. As I manage a website, I can get away with looking at forums and blogs and internet magazines in the name of research although there’s only a limit that my conscience will allow.

My daily commute to work lasts for an hour each way and because it’s by car I lose a lot of valuable reading time. I miss squeezing onto the underground with my paperback when I lived in London, which is something I never thought I’d say. I’m stuck instead with UK radio, which can rot the soul. I know, I should try audio books.

As I said before, I try not to read where I think it might offend others. Mainly family gatherings, or visits to places where I am meant to be doing something, such as water parks, which – inexplicably – I always find myself in. I’ve cunningly found a way around these situations. If you pack a book with your flask and sandwiches for the family picnic, or slip one in with your swimming costume and towel, you need only produce it momentarily when others are looking. Then there’s always the possiblility of striking up a book-related conversation if someone like-minded is passing round the paper plates, or standing behind you in the queue for the water rapids.

Talking of water, I never read in the bath as I can’t bear wrinkly pages, and logistics prevent me from reading whilst sleeping (although I’ve tried, and often wake up in the morning with an open book sprawled over me). Otherwise, I will try my best to read when and where I can.

Comments [6]

My posts are becoming increasingly serious lately so a meme to lighten things up. From Booking Through Thursday. Reading in public, do you do it?

Oh yes. It’s very rare for me to go out without a book in my bag or in my pocket and I find it very easy to concentrate and read in a public place. I could probably settle down to a few chapters in a football stadium. On a recent visit to Sea World in Florida, when the heaving crowds were approaching football stadium levels, I sat in the shade with my book and let them all barge by. My family have got used to me.

If I’m going out for the day and I’ve less than 100 pages to read in my current book, I’ll take the next book I’m planning to read with me as well. Is this eccentric behaviour? If I’m out for the day without a book and at a loose end, maybe with an hour to spare, I’ll buy a book to read if I’m able to. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing or supposed to be doing. As the parent of an eight year old I can easily concentrate on a book with hoards of children buzzing round me, a skill I perfected recently after spending a day in the Children’s Museum in Chicago.

I can read in parks, on buses, planes and trains, standing up in bars and sitting down in restaurants. Being married to a smoker, this is handy as smokers are now obliged to vanish, either on their own or with other smokers, for periodic ten minute breaks. If it wasn’t for my book, I would be horribly alone. I have even been tempted to read in the theatre, after being dragged to a show I desperately didn’t want to see, but held back not wanting to offend the people I was with. For similar reasons I lay off reading during a wedding ceremony, and the speeches that followed.

I don’t think there’s anything odd about reading in public. It’s a combination of shutting out the rest of the world, not giving two hoots as to what other people might think of you, and remembering to take your book in the first place. Being married to a shopaholic, I’ve never yet been refused in department stores when I’ve asked for a stool so I can at least sit down and read in some comfort. Why just stand there and look bored?

Comments [9]

Yet another book survey has named the UK’s most put-downable books. Here’s the list of the most unfinished fiction:

1. Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
3. Ulysses, James Joyce
4. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis De Bernieres
5. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
6. The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
7. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
8. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
9. The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
10. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky

Personally, I can’t see a problem with Vernon God Little. It’s overrated I grant you, but I still like it and it’s a slim volume and not that hard to get through. Similarly, if you have a problem with finishing Harry Potter maybe it’s time to go back to junior school rather than sit around completing surveys?

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is – whether you hail it as a great work of fiction or not – still remarkably lightweight. Who are these people? Probably the ones who waited around for the film versions. In the case of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin it serves them right.

Cloud Atlas I realise may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I did finish it, although Ulysses and War and Peace still remain on my unfinished pile. I’ve never attempted The Satanic Verses (after abandoning Midnight’s Children) and, although I still haven’t read it, The God of Small Things is the book I pick up most in second hand bookshops and go “hmmm…” before putting it back again.

Perhaps it’s something to do with recommendations, whether from the media or from friends. DBC Pierre’s Booker success may have influenced some people to buy it. It did me. And Corelli is more obviously a personal recommendation, so there must be a lot of offended friends out there, after hearing that their favourite book was abandoned. For the record, here’s five books that I urged friends to read, who didn’t like them and made me sad:

1. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
2. London Fields by Martin Amis
3. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger
4. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
5. Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre (bringing us full circle)

You know who you are!

Comments [4]