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| 'A Book A Month' - collected in a pile under bedside lamp |
How many books a year do you read?
I must admit I go through spells - some devouring books, sometimes hitting a dry patch. The trouble is that if I read while I'm doing some creative writing:
a) I find myself fornesically examining what I'm reading rather than purely enjoying it and
b) I'll often find myself too influenced by that writer's style, like a cushion bearing the imprint of the last person who sat on it!
and c) I can't put a book down and find it consumes me, and my time!
Someone I know who doesn't have the chance to read much decided to make a determined effort and try to read book a month last year while taking in some classics he hadn't read. As he finished each one, he collected them in a pile under his bedside lamp (photo above). The books were:
1. Enduring Love - Ian McEwan
2. Orlando - Virginia Woolf
3. The Girl With All The Gifts - M.R.Carey
4. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
5. The Alchemist - Paul Coelho
6. The Odyssey - Homer
7. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemmingway
8. Brighton Rock - Graham Greene
9. Tripwire - Lee Child
10. Brokeback Mountain - Annie Proulx
11. Animal Farm - George Orwell
12. Middlemarch - George Eliot (couldn't fit this on the pile under the lamp!)
I think that's quite an eclectic choice, a good trot through some different literary styles and of different ages. Some he thoroughly enjoyed, other less so.
How did he decide what to read? A combination of personal curiosity, 'best reads' lists, other people's recommendations and what he had at home already.
It would be interesting to see other people's 'book a month' choices....
