WHAT BOOK . .?

..are you reading now?

THIS isn’t a cop-out but I really can’t answer this in the singular as I always have at least two (often ten) books on the go, one fiction and one non-fiction.

This might be an ADHD thing. In fact, one of them at the moment is the catchily titled ADHD 2.0: New Science And Essential Strategies For Thriving With Distraction — From Childhood Through Adulthood, by a couple of American doctors, Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratey. Their first book, Driven To Distraction, was recommended to me by a psychiatrist. That one changed my life.

Fiction-wise, I’m reading The Selected Stories Of Mavis Gallant, all of which I find quietly entrancing. I’ve no idea how I came across this Canadian writer who spent most of her life in France, but I’m very glad I did. I’m also listening to Le Carre’s The Honourable Schoolboy, read by Michael Jayston. I’ve read everything Le Carre wrote, but Jayston’s reading breathes new life into it.

...would you take to a desert island?

I’VE been reading Rebecca West’s mighty tome, Black Lamb And Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia, for an awfully long time. I’m making glacially slow progress. Ordinarily this is a sign I’m not much enjoying a book, but here it’s a tribute to its brilliance.

My mum is from Croatia and the whole region fascinates me. Seeing it through the prism of West’s wisdom, wry humour and (occasionally troubling) prejudices is a real joy.

For my desert island reading I’d want something a) long and b) brilliant. This fits the bill. I might even finish it.

...first gave you the reading bug?

AS A child it was, without doubt, Enid Blyton’s Famous Five. The first one I read was Five Go Off In A Caravan. I still have the hardback copy my nan gave me.

I opened it the other day and found that the words remain quite unnervingly familiar. It was like meeting a childhood friend who hasn’t changed a bit.

When I was off school sick, I’d take to my bed and read all 21 in the original series, in order.

As a young adult it was Thomas Hardy who awakened in me a love of literature. The Mayor Of Casterbridge and Tess Of The d’Urbervilles were, respectively, my O and A-level texts.

...left you cold?

I READ an article somewhere opining that Len Deighton was the best writer of spy fiction. Having exhausted Le Carre’s output, I picked up The Ipcress File but found it unreadable.

It was weird. I couldn’t say the writing was bad, there was just something about the way he constructs his sentences that didn’t suit me.

The Good Drinker: how I Learned To Love Drinking Less, by Adrian Chiles, is published by Profile at £14.99.