(no subject)

[rhythmaning]

frankie_ecap prompted me to consider my relationship with books.  Part of me is reluctant to do so – if only because I think I should write what I want to write about – but I like books, I think they are important, so here goes.  (There may be more, or less, than fifteen things; I don’t think that I can separate different facts about my relationship with books out; they are not discrete).

I grew up with books; we had books all over the house: my father worked in publishing all his life, as did his father; my grandfather edited books – whole series of books – and wrote a novel.  (He was halfway through a sequel when he died a few years ago.)  My grandmother wrote, as well.  

So there were books all over the place.

I also grew up knowing writers and publishers; they would visit, some stayed with us, they would come to my parents’ parties (which were frequent and raucous).  I got taken to places with writers (usually pubs, though I include literary lunches here, too).

I don’t know when I learned to read – I had to ask my mother, and whilst I expected her to say something like six months, what she actually said was six years; so I read relatively late.  As a child, I used to love going to bookshops and choosing books; I read voraciously (if late!).  I also loved going to the library, and I spent a lot of time in our local library – which was in Keats Grove, next door to Keats’ house.  I used to do homework in the big reference library, a mile or so away.  At home, my parents got us the Children’s Britannica, which I used to read – just dip into it – and I still enjoy picking up a reference book, opening it at random, to see what is there.

As a teenager, I would read whatever was lying around at home; I read a lot of books which perhaps my parents shouldn’t have left out (though I can’t remember what!).  I read a lot of proof-copies, with flimsily-bound and rough-cut pages; I enjoyed finding errors, if I could.  I would read the whole time, whatever was to hand; holidays were full of books, a habit that remains – nowadays, I read most when I am on holiday.

I don’t know how fast I read; I must have worked it out at some point, but I can’t remember the answer.  I think I read comparatively quickly (though I could be wrong).  On holiday, I tend to read a book a day; so that would be perhaps 50 pages an hour.  A page a minute?  That sounds about right.  But usually, when I am not on holiday, it takes me a while to finish a book; I probably read thirty or forty books a year – perhaps even one a week, on average (but what is an average book?).

I think that reading itself is part of the pleasure – I am not sure that what I read is or necessarily needs to be of any great quality, though great books are remarkable things.  But since I enjoyed  the very act of reading, it didn’t always matter.  That has changed: now it needs to be good.  Why read something bad – or that you’re not enjoying – when you could read something good?

There was a period when I bought books by volume: pages per pound – value for money.  I was finishing my PhD at the time, and my grant had run out.  This didn’t last long, as quality control kicked in.  There was a Norman Mailer book – and I love Norman Mailer – called, I think, “Book of a Thousand Evenings” or something.  (I must still have it somewhere; I could check, but I can’t find it amongst my hundreds of books I have.)  It was dreadful; truly appalling; I beg you not to read it.  Quality began to count.

I am not sure that I have strong feelings about genre.  I read a lot of science fiction when I was a teenager – Heinlein, Clarke, Dick, Bradbury, Asimov and so on.  They probably now fall into several different genre – they certainly covered very different subject matter.  For a long while, I was snobbishly anti-science fiction.  But I relaxed that view a long time ago: good writing is good writing (and bad is bad), and in any genre there will be good and bad (but probably more bad than good, wherever you look).

Some books I haven’t been able to finish (ever): James Joyce’s “Ulysses” – I took this on holiday to India, expecting that long train journeys through barren landscapes would help me through it, but to no avail; I find it pretty unreadable (and I think that was my third attempt; no more).  Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past”; I couldn’t get past thirty pages or so.  Cakes just aren’t that interesting.  Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”: just plain depressing.

Mostly, though, I finish books I start; but now, it’s not religious: if I don’t enjoy the book, I’ll stop trying.

Here are some books that I think have changed the way I look at the world – they have had a big impact on me (in absolutely no order):

• Paul Auster – “The New York Trilogy”
• Jean-Paul Sartre – “Nausea” (which has possibly the best line ever written in it), and the “Iron in the Soul” trilogy
• Norman Mailer – he has written loads of good stuff, particularly “The Deer Park”
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez – “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter” and “The War at the End of the World”
[Edit] frankie_ecap has correctly pointed out that Mario Vargas Llosa wrote "Aunt Julia"; I got the book right, but not the author - which I think is the way it should be...
• Lawrence Durrell – “The Alexandria Quartet”
• Aldous Huxley – “Eyeless in Gaza”
• Thomas Pynchon – “Gravity’s Rainbow”, “V” and, wonderfully, “The Crying of Lot 49”
• Graham Swift – particularly “Waterland”
[Edit] I realise that I have made a great omission:
• Jeanette Winterson - mentioned in the New Year's Honours List: her earlier books are wonderful: "The Passion" is a beautiful, magical story; "Sexing the Cherry" makes botany sexy; and "Written on the Body" is sad and exciting at the same time - it made me cry.