WHATBOOK..?
. . . are you reading now?
A SONG Of Shadows by John Connolly. There aren’t many book-a-year writers who keep their standards consistently top-drawer, but Connolly gets better each year — and he started off damned brilliant.
The characters he creates are clearly the product of a mind fed a lot of blue cheese before bedtime.
. . . would you take to a desert island?
A LITTLE History Of The World by Ernst Gombrich. It does what it says on the cover: examining civilisation from its beginning to present day. Either that or something about escaping desert islands by Ray Mears.
...first gave you the reading bug?
PROBABLY something by Enid Blyton, who seemed to be the only children’s author available when I was a child.
The library at school and at the community centre was packed with all t hese estate kids swapping books about middleclass twerps from the Fifties foiling smuggling rings on a private island. I think it was escapism at its purest.
Then I read The Devil On The Road by Robert Westall and realised that books can be so much more exciting than TV.
. ..left you cold?
CERTAIN so-called classics bored me to tears, and I have found myself scowling at works by Austen and Hardy and wondering whether it would be bad form to chew through the spine out of boredom.
I dozed off during Amsterdam by Ian McEwan as well, though I normally love his books.