Books Etc

I was feeling a bit grumpy this afternoon so I went bookshopping as retail therapy. It's the best kind: relatively cheap, totally virtuous, and yet also utterly self-indulgent. Anyway, as I can never resist doing, I peeked at GBB in the shelf, and was tickled to find it had a staff recommends band on it. Usually the staff recommends bands have lots of close-written words enthusing earnestly about the joys of the book within. This one, on the other hand, was written in scrappy capitals and just said: BORED GODS MESS AROUND IN NORTH LONDON, RATHER LIKE THE MANAGEMENT TEAM AT BORDERS ISLINGTON. I think I am in love with the management team at Borders Islington now. Or possibly the sarcastic staff who hate them - hard to say. In any case I bought three books as a mark of gratitude as well as greed:

- Ridley Walker by Russell Hoban. I have a real thing for post-apocalyptic novels, a taste which is probably best not closely examined.
- The Position by Meg Wolitzer. Meg Wolitzer is the female [insert great contemporary male American novelist here] [oh OK then - John Updike] apparently, and this one is about a group of siblings who find out their parents have written - and, ahem, illustrated - a Joy of Sex style book.
- The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank - because we purveyors of intelligent-but-light fiction have to stick together.

I'll let you know how I get on. Just finished Paula Spencer this afternoon - Roddy Doyle writing in the first person as an alcoholic woman, so convincingly you'd swear you were reading her mind.

I've been enjoying reading a lot more lately, which might be a surprising statement given that you might imagine writers love reading all the time. But for a long time I got into a really bad habit of 3-for-2 table-surfing, and basically impulse buying a lot of heavily-marketed contemporary fiction which I didn't really want to read that much and therefore, unsurprisingly, often didn't enjoy. Then when I worked in bookshops it got even worse because I'd mainly read proofs and damaged books that we couldn't sell, and so I wasn't even choosing my reads half the time. And then I became a published author, and wasted way too much time on books I'd be sent to give quotes for. You can tell how often I enjoyed those by how many quotes I've given. I have given two quotes. (I am taking a gamble here that the people whose books I've been sent not knowing I've been sent them. If I've been sent your book and you;re reading this, and it makes you feel any better, only one of the quotes I gave - for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - was ever used, so my other quote might have been for your book.)

These days I bypass the 3-for-2s and I only read past the first few pages of the proofs if they really grab me, and instead I go straight to the backlist fiction shelves and browse them intensely, thinking about books I've been wanting to read for a while - old classics, modern classics, prizewinners I missed at the time they won because I was waiting for the paperback and then forgot, books by authors I like, books recommended by friends, books I've read good reviews of, books that get referenced a lot when I'm reading about other authors and other books. And each time I find a big pile that I'd like, and narrow it down to take a few home with me. And my strike rate is much, much higher.

So now I have three cracking reads waiting for me. And to add to my good mood, while I was there, I noticed a few novels that looks similar to the book I'm writing at the moment, so I had a snoop. (No - no clues - sorry!) Anyway, one of them - which was hugely successful when it came out - looked a lot better than my book. But the other two looked a lot worse. I can live with those odds.

I left Borders Islington with a smile on my face, even if the management team are still bored and busy smiting mortals. I love bookshops. You don't get all this from an e-reader.