Idle Reading
Photo by spacmonster / CC
The number of books I read a year has held steady for the last two or three at just over a hundred—usually weighted toward recent “literary fiction” with dollops of comics, mysteries, history, and work-related stuff. I’m happy enough with the volume and the proportion: sometimes the bulk reading threatens to get out of hand — always a sign of too much going on at work — but this year I’d like to try make some headway with books bought but not read.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was a gift that languished on my to-be-read shelves for little more than a year. I think I’d pop it into a light-reading category but it held my attention longer than I thought it would. It’s an epistolary novel and the switching between multiple points of view is done well. It’s a bookish book full of conversation about books and reading. The tone is buoyant if glowingly nostalgic. And as long as you don’t think too hard about the back story (war, concentration camps, slave labour, collaboration, resistance), it’s a good way to read away some hours, especially on a dreary day.
Suggested reading: Anne’s House of Dreams
Suggested counter reading: The Tiger Claw
