I like to think I have pretty eclectic tastes in reading, give or take the odd genre or two. I’m not at all keen on horror. Science fiction I’m very selective about. And the most self-important of lit fic I can take or leave, and mostly opt to leave. Crime fiction is numero uno, but I’ll give most things a try.
On my to-read pile at the moment are the last but one Stephen Booth (I read the previous two in quick succession a couple of weeks ago); Kate Atkinson’s fourth Jackson Brodie title and the new Mark Billingham; a Margaret Forster I hadn’t come across before, but the bookshop was doing three-for-two; and Winifred Holtby’s South Riding, which is a re-read after the lovely recent TV adaptation – it must be twenty years since I read it for the first time.
I have a birthday coming up, so I expect the pile will grow. Fortunately, since I’m neither a jewellery person nor the kind who spends hours in clouds of scented steam in the bathroom, I’m impossible to buy gifts for and my family never know what else to give me! I hope that in a couple of weeks the to-reads may include a new J D Robb, maybe an early Zoe Sharp if my gift-givers have managed to track them down, Sue Miller’s The Senator’s Wife and Susan Hill’s latest Simon Serrailler adventure if it’s out in paperback. Lots of lovely holiday reading; we leave two weeks tomorrow, and between ten-hour flights at each end and dark evenings in motels in nightlife-free parts of Arizona and Utah (I’m not a nightlife person either), the books will need their own suitcase. (No, I’m not buying a Kindle! Some of us have to keep the faith!) And who knows, while I’m in the US, I may pick up an E J Copperman or two, or maybe even an early Jeff Cohen…
I can guarantee I’ll enjoy every single one of the above. The authors are all familiar; some of the books are from series whose characters are almost like old friends. And I keep discovering new authors – not necessarily debuts, but people I haven’t read before, whose work I want to pursue.
And there are only twenty-four hours in a day, and I have to spend some of them working and sleeping. And believe it or not, other things happen which eat into the reading time.
How’s a girl to choose what to read from the wealth of books available to her?
Mostly I apply the 50-page test. If I’m not hooked by then, I’m probably not going to be – and life’s too short for books I’m not enjoying.
Which is fine if the book has come from the library; I spend far too much in bookshops, but the library is invaluable for test-driving a new author who may or may not pass the 50-page test.
Or even a new book by a familiar author. I don’t know what good fairy made me pick up Joanne Harris’s blueeyedboy last time I was wandering the aisles, but I’m glad I did before I parted with hard cash. Don’t get me wrong; I love Harris’s work, and it's not as if she needs my money. Chocolat would make my all-time top ten, and until now I’ve enjoyed every twist, turn and genre-jump of her career. But I couldn’t connect with blueyedboy. Sorry, Joanne; nothing personal. It’s probably me.
There are books I’ve borrowed which I’d love to buy – my J D Robb collection has several gaps dating back to a time when I was broke and the library was my haven – but bookshops are draconian about stocking backlist more than a couple of years old. Heck, they’re reluctant to stock anything more than a couple of months old!
There are also books I’ve bought which I’ve wished afterwards that I’d borrowed instead. The da Vinci Code, though I confess I did finish it. And others which I won’t risk litigation by naming.
How about a challenge, blog-followers? How about a list of books we wish we hadn’t bought – or maybe hadn’t even read?
