I returned much refreshed from my recent very welcome holiday with two favourite people with whom I share a good deal, including a joy in reading.
We all have busy working lives, so time spent in easy
sunshine beside a Mediterranean lagoon is to be relished. Truly the thought of a week reading at
leisure in the clear southern light becomes a distinct and positive pleasure, even for Mme Lickedspoon and me who read and write for a living. For us, reading of all kinds – even fiction - is also work or some kind of research
.
As the weeks went on I became interested in the fact that the three of us read with equal enjoyment but at very different speeds.
M. Lickedspoon is not a writer and doesn’t read fiction as
part of his busy day job. On holiday he made his way through the most books in the three
weeks. He does read for leisure though, in his normal life. Among other books he likes thrillers and detective stories and easily moves between Kindle and
paper forms. I thought you might be interested in his impressive list of books
read over three weeks.
1. Blackwater Lake
2. All Kinds of Dead - (Inspector Carlyle Book 11) - James Craig (Kindle)
3. Hunted - (Detective Mark Heckenburg, Book 5) - Paul Finch (Actual Book)
4. Strangers - (Detectiv Lucy Clayburn, Book 1) - Paul Finch (Actual Book)
5. Stalkers (Detective Mark Heckenburg, Book 1) - Paul Finch (Kindle)
6. Sacrifice (Detective Mark Heckenburg, Book 2) - Paul Finch (Kindle)
7. Stop for Breakfast (Augill Castle
8. The Killing Club (Detective Mark Heckenburg, Book 3) -
Paul Finch (Kindle)
9. Guapa - Saleem Haddad (Kindle)
10. Dead Man Walking (Detective Mark Heckenburg, Book 4) -
Paul Finch (Kindle)
This total is an improvement on that of Mme Lickedspoon and myself - the two of us who write for a living. Between us in those weeks we read – and very much enjoyed - a total of four books and one Kindle:
1.
Commonwealth: Ann Patchett
2.
Hot Milk: Debora Levey
3.
The Vanishing Futurist: Charlotte Hobson
4.
The Burgess Boys: Elizabeth Strout (See my comment on this novel in my last post on Lifetwicetasted>
5.
New
edition of Jilly Cooper’s whimsical; Class
– read on Kindle by both of us. But this doesn’t count as it is better
labelled work/research.
I’ve been wondering if I could come up with an explanation for this gap - this difference.
Some Possible Reasons?
·
We
all agreed it wasn’t a competition.*
·
Madame
L and I cannot resist enthusiastic discussions - on the balcony or in the café on
the quayside - about what we’re reading. Time consuming of course. But then,
for once, we did have the time.
·
Madame
L had a commissioned article to write. So she did have some work to do.
·
As for me I spent a good time listening to
Hilary Mantel’s clever, insightful Rieth Lectures – even making notes. This was
surely research but it was the same time totally enjoyable – the line between
work and leisure entirely blanked out. Then because we were there we had to make time
on the balcony to discuss the importance of Mantel’s ideas to any writer.
Anyway when I got home - fully
rested and inspired by France as well as Madame Lickedspoon and Hilary Mantel -
I rushed to order Jean Rhys’s luminous Dark
Sargasso sea , (which had come up in a discussion).
I also ordered Hilary Mantel’s A Place of
Greater Safety, set in the French Revolution.
The books came yesterday and I
spent the day curled up reading the whole of The Wide Sargasso Sea – a brilliant slender volume of a hundred and
twenty pages. Mantel’s novel is a heavier tome at eight hundred and twenty pages
and could, I suspect, take much longer
than a day to read.
 |
| Portrait of the charismatic Camille Demoulins. |
Perhaps another holiday? Another balcony?
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