Why I love reading

I love books. I’ve probably loved them all my life – my mum tells a story of how she had to read my favorite book over and over to me when I was less than two years old, so my love for literature started very early on.

I learned to read very young and pretty soon I was in the local library taking with me all the books I had the strength to carry and then returning them in maybe a week just to get another load. The selection wasn’t huge so I’m pretty sure I read most books several times.

I’ve read the classics, the Dostoyevskys, the Tolstoys, the Kafkas, the Prousts and what-have-you’s. I didn’t like Mill on the Floss but loved Vanity Fair, I love Jane Austen but don’t like Dickens except for Pickwick… Like many a reader I suppose there’s not much logic to my reading or my likes and disliking’s.

When I say I love books it means I also love to have them, to feel them, to own them. I’ve never learned to like e-books and my once so fruitful relationship with libraries has pretty much died. I prefer to buy a book and then save it for just the right moment. I prefer paperbacks over hardcovers, mostly for their convenience: you can fit one in your bag, you can stuff 3 paperbacks on your bookcase in the space of just one hardback, you don’t get horrid pain in your arms from holding a paperback… You get the drift. I’m a writers nightmare I guess, buying hardbacks only when it’s one of my favourite authors new books and I just can’t wait.

So what are my favorite authors then? I prefer reading relatively new literature, mainly British and American authors like Kate Atkinson, Nick Hornby, Zadie Smith, Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Coe… I love discovering new authors and then getting through their works. I absolutely love books that play with your mind or with the text – when it’s cleverly done and isn’t just a gimmick. I read some B.S. Johnson after reading Like a Fiery Elephant, but after reading an omnibus of 4 books realised it wasn’t for me. I’ve read one book by David Foster Wallace and started another but realized that The Pale King isn’t one of those books you can read in bed in little bits every night so will have to give it a go during a holiday, possibly.

My great weakness are detective stories, the easy kind with not much suspense or violence. So as you can guess I'm all for Christie, Simenon, Marsh, Dickson Carr etc and not so much your "cool" contemporary suspense writers. There's just nothing better than sitting outside in the sun with a lovely detective story that you've probably read a thousand times before. Unfortunately my favorite authors have stopped producing new works decades ago..

I’m not a critic, don’t pretend to be one and don’t want to be one. But I thought I’d give this blog thing a crack. Since I love to read so much I figured this might be a way to talk about a thing I love – possibly with likeminded people. So here goes…