Its just so easy to find and then acquire books these days. Not only can I track down virtually anything I want using the Internet (e.g, The Book Depository - why should I keep plugging Amazon?), but my local library also has online search and reserve capability. Add to that, a constant supply of reviews on websites like Guardian and Times books, and its almost impossible to keep the to-be-read list down to a reasonable size.
So many of the books on my list are what I would call "compelling" that the only option seems to be to increase the amount of time I spend reading - its not so much finding more time for reading, as avoiding waste of time, i.e. carrying a book with you when you have to go and get a new tyre for the car, or to an optician's appointment which you just know will be delayed. You can recognise the really compulsive reader when you see someone reading a book in a supermarket check-out queue.
I have suddenly built up a "to-be-read" pile which is far too large. It now consists of
- Robert Blythe - Field Work
- Nicholson Baker - Human Smoke
- Simon Gray - The Last Cigarette
- Adam Thirlwell - The Delighted States
- James Hamilton-Patterson - Rancid Pansies
- Ian Kelly - Casnova
- Paul Verhaegen - Omega Minor
When I've finished Simon Gray's latest volume of his memoirs (no, not memoirs. Diaries perhaps? Not quite that either I suppose), I'll start on the new James Hamilton-Paterson Rancid Pansies which arrived this week on its publication date. I've enjoyed the previous two comedies about the ghost-writer Gerald Samper and this new one is set like the first in Tuscany and re-introduces Samper's love/hate relationship with his Eastern European neighbour Marta.
I confess to only having read Hamilton-Paterson's "Samper" books, and its slightly difficult to reconcile my impression of the author of these satirical comedies with the Guardian's profile, which describes him as "among the most reclusive and mysterious of British literary exiles. A loner by temperament, he belongs to no metropolitan coterie or salon, and for the past 25 years has ploughed his own furrow". Apart form the Samper novels, he has some fairly heavy-weight books under his belt, and interestingly, "he remains deeply fond and admiring of the Suffolk writer Ronald Blythe, author of Akenfield" - one of whose books is already on my to-be-read pile.
No doubt Rancie Pansies will be as amusing as its predecessors and its one of those books which demands good associations with its reading, perhaps a quiet part of this Sussex coastline, or a corner of the garden. Definitely not one to be nibbled at in the check-out queue.
