I am illiterate.
I know that will not come as a surprise to anybody who has tried to make sense of by previous scribblings, but amid statistics published by the National Literacy Trust that three in 10 UK children 'own no books' I have to confess that I haven't had a proper sit down read of a novel in ages.
I'm trying to think back to what the last one I read was. Nope - it's been that long ago I can't remember. Away from novels, I did polish off William Shatner's autobiography a couple of months ago, but that was the very definition of a 'toilet book', composed as it was of a compilation of anecdotes that made it easy to dip in to during short trips to the bathroom.
Blimey, the more I think about it I'm not even that good with comics and I'm supposed to be really into them. I've just renewed the three graphic novels I borrowed from the library because I still haven't got round to reading them after three weeks (and coupled with the fact I don't seem to be watching that much telly what am I doing with my time?)
What it is, right (oh, how I hate that phrase. It's almost always followed by the words 'I've got no money to pay for a ticket', or 'I've missed the train I was booked on'. When did I get so cynical? Or is it merely realistic? Am I ever likely to hear someone say 'What it is, right, is that I thought you might like a Fruit Pastille'? Probably not), is that I seem to be tired all the time. Not surprising, I guess, what with it being 3 in the morning now. But whenever I get a quiet moment and start to read I tend to get so relaxed that I drop off to sleep before I know it. A book at bedtime almost never works - I do that 'reread the last paragraph three times' thing regularly as I start to doze.
I have The Visitor by Sheri S Tepper by my bedside.
I haven't picked it up in months as it fell foul of my drooping eyelids (and I love Sheri S Tepper. I haven't read her last few books, but there was a time when I would eagerly consume each new title as it came out. She has a real talent for dropping you right in the middle of a fully created world with its own peculiar society and language and then filling out the details as the plot unfolds. I love her turn of phrase too - dates in The Visitor are labelled ATHCAW much as we would put AD or CE after a year. It turns out this stands for 'After The Happening Came And Went' with no explanation at first as to what 'The Happening' might have been. Today's musings were inspired by the news that her next book will connect together characters and plots from A Plague of Angels and its recent sequel The Waters Rising with ones from her True Game books from, whoa, way back in the 80s, man. So I've got to get reading again...). That will be my next book - eventually.
I've always envied the ability of my friend Lindsay to speed through a doorstep sized Stephen King in an afternoon. My concentration tends to wander too easily. It doesn't help that I have a lousy memory. Oh, trivia and odd details stick there, but I honestly couldn't tell you much of what happened in most of the books I've read. But the sense and the themes, and the odd image, seem to get absorbed into my unconscious somehow. Perhaps, for someone like me, if they could come up with novels in a lotion form that you could apply like sun cream and take in by osmosis that would be a solution (oo, bonus pun points there, I think). That's more or less what I try to do now with audiobooks - absorb a reading when I go on a journey. But the nodding off problems still apply, and the 10 minute walk to work is too short to build up a sense of narrative - gone are the days of half an hour on the bus in either direction and reading a couple of chapters a day. Mind you, it wouldn't be impossible to squeeze in one of Martin Jarvis' fab Just William readings.
And when am I going to get around to 'proper' books. I've done some Brontës, a bit of Hardy, a little Marquez but I keep saying I'll get around to Dickens and Austen one day. When, though? I have a backlog of Paul Magrs and what's that latest Maupin Tales of the City book like? The film of Submarine has made me want to chase up the book and if I reread Hitchhiker like I've threatened to do will I ever make it to Eoin Colfer's follow-up And Another Thing? Perhaps I should stick to non-fiction - those Caitlin Moran and Tina Fey books look good.
Hmm, perhaps I should invest in an ebook reader - something gimmicky to kick start this new literary binge (although it's obscene how much more expensive a Kindle is in this country compared to America). No, an iPad! There we go, I've got an good excuse to get an iPad now.
And if I don't feel like reading anything there's plenty of other stuff I could do on it...
More soonliest
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