Confessions of a book-aholic

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There is, after all, a lot to be said for reading for pleasure

The recent Cheltenham Literary Festival apparently came up with an event that reinforced the notion that supposedly keen readers lie about what they read. According to the bookpromoting boffins, it is surprisingly common for people to claim they have read the great classics when they’ve never actually got further than the cover.

People tend, it would appear, to say they’ve read what they think they ought to have read when in reality, they’ve picked up the plot basics from TV or film adaptations or from book reviews.

It must be said that, on occasion, I have done something similar for my book club when I’ve got to a Monday morning and realised I haven’t read the chosen volume to be discussed that evening over a glass or two. We meet in a cocktail bar, what can I tell you…

But, for the most part, having been a voracious and happy reader of the fictional written word all my life, I can fairly honestly say that I have indeed read most of the books on the list that Cheltenham came up with as classic but rarely perused. Rebecca? I’m your man. Moby Dick and Don Quixote? I struggled to the end of both. One Hundred Years of Solitude?

It certainly felt like it took 100 years of solitude but I got there eventually. War and Peace? Tick. Crime and Punishment? Tick. Animal Farm? Yup. Catch 22? You bet. Wuthering Heights? As a pseudo-Goth teen, I loved having my heights wuthered although I do think that any sensible woman grows out of Heathcliff once she grows up herself. The Catcher in the Rye? Er, no. Couldn’t cope with that. Same with any and all of Tolkien. Jane Austen? Cover to cover. Shakespeare and Dickens (see above)? Selected highlights and mainly the shorter ones, as with the wordy output of Sir Walter Scott. And I’ve never been able to take Ernest Hemingway seriously since I read the sublime spoofs of the late, great satirist Alan Coren.

I came to To Kill a Mockingbird late in life – only about a decade ago – but I read it avidly and loved it. I read Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar in school because I had to, but read it I did. Now, how much I actually recall of these formative tomes is a moot point. And the Cheltenham bookworms reckon that one of the great reasons (or excuses) people give for not knowing a lot about some of these iconic tales is that they “read them so long ago that the details are a blur”.

I admit it, I probably haven’t read 1984 since 1984 so there you are. I still love a good book, though, even if my current habit (apart from book club suggestions – thank you, ladies!) tend towards copious amounts of crime fiction rather than anything regarded (not always correctly in my view) as more “literary”.

So I freely confess that I have not and never intend to read The Handmaid’s Tale (or its much-vaunted and much more recent follow-up) and that the current controversy about the film version of the prize-winning The Goldfinch has passed me by because the last Donna Tartt work I tackled was The Secret History in about 1992.

There is, after all, a lot to be said for reading for pleasure rather than boxticking or list-compiling.

To which the only possible response must be: “Aye, right!” Rather than “Aye, read!” of course… Intrusive angles

I watched quite a lot of the World Athletic Championships last week. Not being of a sporty turn of mind or having any ability at all to do anything that requires grace and coordination of any sort, I have huge admiration for anyone who can walk and blink at the same time, let alone introduce some level of deliberate movement or element of speed into the process.

I was also, on a completely shallow basis, much taken by the amount of personal grooming prevalent amongst many of the female athletes (and one or two of the guys).

Amazing and intricate hair dressing, immense curtains of false eyelashes and long nails reminiscent of the late Flo-Jo abounded, which may not have seemed very aerodynamic but which didn’t seem to hold back those sporting such styles.

Good on them, I say, if it adds to personal confidence. And of course, as in any other walk of life, women are panned for looking glamorous and criticised when they don’t so they may as well do exactly as they please.

So it was interesting to hear that several female athletes weren’t all that happy with the very close camera angles created by the supposedly innovative use of starting block cameras. Not just because they might be unflattering, but because they verged on the downright intrusive.

To me, it did feel a bit like the sporting equivalent of upskirting and I would suggest adding to the understanding and appreciation of the talents and sporting abilities of the athletes, male or female.

Even in this modern age of selfies and Instagram, that kind of close-up should surely keep its distance.

Picture: PA. Cheltenham Literature Festival is the longest-running literature festival in the world.