“Most of us read novels most intensely at two stages of life. First in early adolescence – when one lives with one’s nose in a book. Secondly in late life, when one has time to “get round” to the books one has always promised oneself.”
Or so John Sutherland at the Guardian fondly believes. You might spot a much shorter version of this post as a comment from me broadly agreeing with that idea. I don’t – it was just for the sake of argument – the conventional novel format has never appealed to me in the slightest, and certainly not in my teens. I much prefer “genre” books – thrillers, police procedurals, s-f, fantasy, horror in the past (but mostly grown out of that – gratuitous violence, even if it is fictional, has little appeal), travel, cooking, baking, bread-making, the outdoors (those last books mostly given away now I’m housebound – they just made me miserable, harking back to a lost past), humour, birding – the list goes on.
True, I did attempt the so-called “worthy” novels I was expected to read when young, and Continue reading
Ron's Rants... 