Reading between the lines

To my great regret, I don't read nearly as much as I used to.

It's not deliberate and, bearing in mind that I make a 40 minute train journey twice a day, I can't really claim that I don't have the time.

I appear simply to have lost the habit.

As a child I read extensively. Having said that, I could be (and remain) quite stubborn over my reading. When I was at primary school, my teacher announced to the class that every girl should read Little Women, Black Beauty and Jane Eyre. I made up my mind I would never read the first two, and was decidedly miffed that I had already read the third. Jane Eyre remains the only one of those three books I have read.

I remember that I read The Lord of the Rings before I started secondary school (I must have read it in the weeks before and after my 11th birthday), and in my early teens I read Nevil Shute, Isaac Asimov, Nancy Mitford, alongside Dickens, Hardy, Bronte, Shakespeare .....

As I became older my reading became more sporadic, but remained fairly wide ranging. I would (and will) read everything I can get my hands on by a certain author, and then read nothing for weeks, or even months. Authors have included Primo Levi, Terry Pratchett, Sergei Lukyanenko, Jeffrey Archer, Josephine Tey, Donna Leon, John Wyndham, Naomi Novik .....

I wish I could get myself into the habit of regular reading, but I doubt that I will do so without falling into my usual pattern of "binging".

These musings started when I tried to decide my three favourite books. For the record, they are:

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Giorgio Bassani). Sort of (auto)biographical, Bassani takes a minor role as he relates the lives of the Jewish community in Ferrara at the start of World War II. This made a massive impression on me when I first read it in my mid-twenties. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Garden-Finzi-Continis-Penguin-Modern-Classics/dp/0141188367/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1375294378&sr=8-2&keywords=garden+finzi+continis.

 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot). An intensely moving book, easily readable despite its medical/scientific subject, telling the story of the woman whose cell-line became the foundation of much medical research without her consent, or any recompense for her or her descendants. It was the start of medical ethics, but recent developments (since the book was published) have unfortunately shown there's still a way to go. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/0330533444/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375294693&sr=1-1&keywords=henrietta+lacks

And then I get a little stuck. I've chosen two serious books, so would like the third to be humorous. But which? I adore Terry Pratchett, but I can't really choose "The Complete Works of ..." (or even "The Complete Discworld". If I had to select my favourite Pratchett book, it would be Soul Music, a book which builds throughout to a punchline it alludes to, but never actually states. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Soul-Music-Discworld-Novel-Novels/dp/0552140295/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375295589&sr=8-1&keywords=pratchett+soul+music

But ....

If I'm limited to individual works, then there's one book that had me laughing out loud on the 07:16 train and, when there was a fire drill at work, my immediate thought was that I'd have extra reading time. Comic "Flashman in Space" with every science fiction allusion you can imagine, I offer you Space Captain Smith (Toby Frost). http://www.amazon.co.uk/Space-Captain-Smith-Toby-Frost/dp/1905802137/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375295947&sr=1-2&keywords=space+captain+smith And the good news is that the fourth book in the series is out in less than two weeks!