I read everywhere and anywhere: in bed, in the bath, eating dinner, waiting for appointments, staff rooms, on the sofa, in the big blue chair, in the garden, friends houses, sneakily at work when I've got to a really gripping bit, not so sneakily at work when I can do it under the cover of 'research', even at a party (I'd wandered into a room with the books in whilst everyone else was singing along to the BeeGees). If I'd found a safe way to hold a book and walk the dog, I'd do it.
Nor am I particularly choosy, preferring to pick a book on the strength of how the sentences jump out and coil themselves around my heart when I open it at a random page - life is too short to swim against a tide of words that bore or repel you.
Please, never buy me a kindle. My soul belongs to the printed word, the smell of ink and paper, the crackle of well thumbed pages, however much I may blether on in cyberspace.
If you have any suggestions for books that I should try, please email them to me (poppycorkhill@yahoo.co.uk): for 2012, I'm attempting to break out of my predominantly English/English-speaking book-rut, and head on a page-bound world-wide journey. Even head-in-the-clouds readers need goals.
2011:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
In the Blue House by Meaghan Delahunt
The Last Cigarette by Simon Grey
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
Jeff in Venice/Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer
Any Human Heart by William Boyd
Caravaggio by Andrew Graham-Dixon
Marrying the Mistress by Joanna Trollope
Selected short stories by Zola
The Italian Affair by Laura Fraser
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
Aphrodite's Hat by Sally Vickers
Travels with Myself and Another by Martha Gelhorn
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Mr Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Hidden Bhutan by Martin Uitz
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Horses Make a Landscape More Beautiful by Alice Walker
Laurie Lee biography by Valerie Grove
Elegies by Douglas Dunn
Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories
Colour of Memory by Geoff Dyer
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Fireworks by Angela Carter
Fludd by Hilary Mantel
Whigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes
Foundation: A History of England by Peter Ackroyd
about 10 Agatha Christies re-read for comfort purposes in September.
Mapp and Lucia
The Shipping News
2012:
The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad
Why be Happy When You Can Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson
Wyrd Sisters, Lords and Ladies, Masquerade and Carpe Jugulem by Terry Pratchett
Open Secrets by Alice Munro
The Italian Affair by Laura Fraser
Eat Love Pray by Elizabeth Gilbert
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
