Verbiage of reason

I'm having something of a crisis with my reading material at the moment.  I like to have, in fact must have, a book on the go at all times.  To ensure that there's no unpleasant book-free hiatus, I always cue up a new one as I approach the drawing room denouement chapter of my current read.

Once I've committed to a book, I don the hair-shirt and simply have to finish it.  So it is then that I find myself wading through Balzac's Cousin Bette like a condemned man on the long walk to the gallows.

I read Pere Goriot when I was young and enthusiastic (remember those days?) and adored it.  I had great hopes for this book then.  Unfortunately, it's shite - verbose, slow, confusingly-plotted and all the characters are loathsome.  I've only kept reading it in the forlorn hope that there's a chapter looming in which all the protagonists are making their way across a level-crossing when they're hit by a runaway train full of red-hot anvils.

No joy so far.  On with chapter ninety then.

Desert Island discs

I was in Foyles yesterday afternoon.  I need to contextualise that, don't I?  Stop being so London-centric.  Foyles is a large bookshop on the Charing Cross Road in central London.  Right, so I was in Foyles, skimming the shelves for some holiday reading.  The store relocated recently into the building next door to its original home, and the extra space means they've been able to squeeze in tons of new stock.

This presents a problem.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to read, so being a methodical type, I started at A in the fiction section and carried on through the alphabet, making mental notes as I went as to books I fancied.  The problem is I have thousands of improving books to read, and only so much time left before I go doolally due to old age.  

This means I'm having to make some very tough decisions about new authors.  I did think about tearing through most of Balzac, but he wrote ninety, fairly-hefty tomes.  I estimate I'd have to give it a decade to get through them all.  I don't think I can spare ten years at this stage in proceedings.  I'm not exactly old, but I can't see the foothills of old on the horizon, and I don't want to devote the march up to them exclusively to one author, no matter how worthy and entertaining.

As it is I happened across a new author for me, Hermann Hesse.  I picked-up a copy of Steppenwolf.  It's serious stuff, but so far extremely compelling also.  I am concerned it might turn me into even more of a sociopath, but that's why I'm tremendous fun to be around for the most part, my ability to take literary risks.

I was so taken with Steppenwolf that I started reading it immediately, even though I had another book on the go.  I'm usually scrupulous in finishing one book prior to blowing the froth off another, but this time I couldn't wait.  Hesse's unlikely bedfellow in the this case is P.G Wodehouse.  And the book, "Meet Mr Mulliner", could not be lighter and more frivolous if it came with a free Labrador puppy.

The ballad of reading gaol

Due to bad planning, I found myself without a book the other lunchtime.  This caused some panic to old mister brain.  The idea of an hour stranded in Canary Wharf without literary diversion?  No, thank-you.  CW is an cultural desert - there, I've said it.  The shops are boring unless you like Ugg boots and sunglasses.  So there's nuttin' to do.  This causes introspection, and before you know it the river police are fishing you out of The Thames before sedating you and wrapping your quivering form in a foil blanket.

No, we can't have that, so I had to run off and buy a book.  I have developed rather an addiction to reading, generally fiction.  Most people look upon this as an admirable trait, but I see it just as another mania, and something that needs to be kept in check.  Yes, one should read regularly and actively; it's good for the noggin.  But if you find yourself getting the yips and trembling like a 15-year-old Pekingese because you've mislaid your copy of The Day of The Jeckal, then perhaps you need to cut down.

It's funny how class-riven matters like this are (in England too!)  Reading is middle-class and is therefore always beneficial, the logic has it.  But when you distill it down, literature is simply distracting oneself by reading a lot of pretendy words.  How is that more worthy than watching John Craven's Newsround or Top Gear, say, or drinking fine wines for that matter?  I contend it isn't, your honour.

Despite my reservations regarding its inherent merit, I ended-up studying literature at college.  Luckily lit crit at undergraduate level dispenses with plot obsession - the colour of Mr Micawber's socks, for example - and is actually more akin to cultural studies, or social anthropology.  The upshot of this is that I don't remember much about specific books, but know much more about the authors.  It always brings people up short that a literature graduate can't remember the name of Pip's sister in Great Expectations, but there it is.

Pip, pip!