I’m a reader. I read a lot. That’s what tube travel was invented for. Not time travel, that’s something else. Not somewhere else, more sometime else. If you were a time traveller and there was a delay, would that mean that your British Timeways trip to 1776 is not leaving for 15 minutes? (and would that matter??) or that its only going as far as 1829?
Anyway, books, me, snob.
I don’t read classics. Anything by any Bronte, Austen, Dickens or anyone else on my set books from school, wouldn’t touch ’em. Nor Agatha Christie. Who wrote a hundred whodunnits. Or the same one a hundred times.
And I don’t read biography or autobiography unless its by/about a really good sportsperson. Or maybe someone who’d had multiple breast enhancements. I will read non-fiction, but only if its very sciency. Fermat’s Last Theorem. Chaos Theory. Stephen Hawking (I completely understood the meaning of life, the universe and everything whilst reading him, until I put the book down, then it was gone), even Richard Dawkins. Though my fave was the late, great Stephen Jay Gould. Who? Harvard professorial mega-brain who published 25 years of monthly essays in neat, bite-sized chunks of evolutionary biology, geology, history and philosophy of science, and all written with charm, wit and humour. Unlike Richard Dawkins who writes about similar stuff but with arrogance, smugness, dogmatism and an attitude so sneering that you repeatedly punch the book hoping that it will find its way to the author’s face. Not great if you use a Kindle.
Which I do. I love my Kindle, you can keep yer soddin’ paperised rubbish, I’m a e-man. And the best thing about ebooks is that there are free ones. So as I search Amazon’s vast ‘library’ for decent books to acquire, I also grab a few freebies. What’s to lose? Only pride. As these free books, often first time, self-published writers, and not always the best. So what? Out of every 10 there’ll be one gem. Maybe.
Free books tend to fall into categories. Or ‘genres’ as us pretentious book snobs call them. There’s the clumsy, clicheed cops and robbers ‘thrillers’, there’s slash-em-up horror, fantasy game-a-thronesesque twaddle, vampires and zombies, trying to be the next Twilight, and there’s romcoms. Loads of loved up twenty/thirty-somethings looking for ‘Mr Right’. Always written by women, for women, about women. And they’re all the same.
Girl bumps into a guy in Starbucks (all very contemporary, probably while she’s tweeting as she queues) who spills her coffee. “Why you clumsy, idiotic, stu-” his eyes were the biggest, blackest pools I’d ever seen, his muscles rippled as his white (and coffee stained) Armani shirt stretched across his maaaassive chest, the bulge in his trousers was like a third bicep…
Later the next day/week/whenever they meet again in a work/therapy/social situation and reinforce their mutual contempt and displeasure, whilst really admiring each other’s physical perfection. Ugly fat people have no literature. They don’t fall in love, they just fall over. So on page 1 you know how the book ends. All these books. But its the journey to that end that makes the book. The men are all beautiful, the women ‘sassy’ and cute. And they’re all in Seattle. I must visit that city one day and look at all the stunning women and bulging men all spilling coffee over each other. Maybe I’ll open a dry-cleaning business there.
So that’s it; my guilty secret. I love stupid, slushy rom-coms. But only if they’re well-written and funny.
Otherwise it has to be Stephen King; the Master. John Irving, a God among writers. Harlen Coben and Carl Hiaason because they write the funniest brilliant crime books. Jonathan Tropper, only 4 books so far but no-one does dysfunctional family better or with greater wit. Philip Roth is also a master. Ayn Rand (they’re ‘classics’ of a sort) only wrote about 3 books but as each is about 1500 pages long that counts as much more, and if you’re up to it, they’re quite amazing. Robert Harris is great, David Baldacci has his moments and so many others it would be like listing the entire World Cup squads for every country. And still there’d be no mention of Ashley Cole.
I’m off to the tube. Perchance to read.
Happy tuesday
A xxxx
Well the Quincunx was indeed remarkable, quite outstanding in fact, and the Dice Man (as the cover promised it would) ‘changed my life forever’. I even read the sequel, whatever that was called and it is probably singularly responsible for my sequelphobia affliction.
The Mezzanine sounds interesting but (I just looked) is not available on Kindle. What the f????
And keep your cultural boorishness to yourself, I’m a reconstructed, rom-com reading, tears-on-the-tube, fully-fledged knuckle dragger.
Spooky. You been spying on my library again?
On the sciency front, have you read Richard Feynman? And without wanting to sound too pretentious (moi?), pick up a Dickens and give it a go. It may surprise you. I agree about the Jane Austen and Emily Bronte girly stuff, though, but that’s because we share a degree of cultural boorishness.
And, just to pass it on, three books that deserve to be promoted at any opportunity:
The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker and The Quincunx by James Palliser. The Dice Man has to get a special mention too.