Me, Well Read? Not Really…
Do you think reading these posts that I am a well read person? They say writers should read a lot and it sounds like good advice. Though it’s always interesting to me how many musicians say they don’t listen to many other folks’ music when they are writing, so that they are fresh in their own creativity and not unduly influenced by others’.
I’ve never thought of myself as ADHD or such, nor been checked or diagnosed, but when it comes to reading, I’ve always favoured shorter form writing, short chapters, non-fiction, and terseness highly. As a kid I read a lot of short story collections, and I always remember getting one out from my local library called Space 2. Even something like that, I would not necessarily read all the stories; Some I would read a few pages of and lose interest. The one that sticks in mind from that was the Ray Bradbury story, “Tomorrow’s Child”, which can be read now in the collection, “I Sing the Body Electric!”. It’s a very odd SF/fantasy story about a couple who bear a child resembling a blue pyramid. I think I read this not long after, or maybe even during the period I was still visiting the kids’ section too.
The other formative reading experience for me, and a lot of other U.K. Gen X boys was 2000 A.D. comic, which I devoured from age 8 to 18 roughly, when other interests kicked in and the comic itself became less my sort of SF thing. My writing heroes then, and now: Pat Mills, John Wagner, Alan Grant and early period Alan Moore. Writers who knew how to get in, tell a story and get out, whilst still imbuing it with subtext, and of a left wing, socially-conscious flavour which was important and welcome for this Scottish kid, growing up under the first Tory hegemony, seemingly imposed from down South.
I read a fair amount of non-fiction books and particularly loved illustrated books about science, space, astronomy and the future us end of Apollo kids were told was coming soon. I still own two books from this time which encapsulate this well:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3478067-frontiers-of-space
The first of these reviewed the space race and previewed its next stage, the Space Shuttle programme, then a few years from launch, the second the various studies and ideas of corporations and NASA about what else was possible with the moon and beyond to Mars. Like the nuclear fusion power that was said to be coming soon in my late 70s books, I am here 40+ years later, still waiting for that promised utopian future as we continue to burn the planet by doing the same stupid stuff we’ve done since the Industrial Revolution. Yay, end stage capitalism.
As I got to secondary school I read more novel length books. Douglas Adams was a favorite, another writer with a fantastic gift for brevity, as well as wit. Much as the poor guy struggled over every single word clearly, what stone was left after his carving was superb, and has stood the test of time, as I said here on mastodon.
As the first film was coming, I read Dune. Now that was a milestone for me, a thick novel! It was a struggle, but I enjoyed it at the time. It was of course easier to read such a book with far fewer distractions at hand, only four TV channels and ZX Spectrum games to get in the way, let alone no job or commitments, just minimal school effort. I was, and still am not at all motivated by academia, or learning for the sake of something I don’t have as a near term goal.
By my teens I had pals who were regular library users and much bigger readers of novels than me, arguably this motivated me to read more. I would say the writer who made me read the most of their work is the late, great genius Iain (M) Banks. Curiously though, although I read his first ‘M’, SF, Culture novel, Consider Phlebas, not long after I read his first book, The Wasp Factory, and much as I loved Consider Phlebas, I started and gave up on the next SF one, The Player of Games. I did a better job of reading his mainstream, non M novels, reading half of those as they came out. Of the SF, I read only three more and found them hard work. However, during lockdown I resumed my chipping away at Banks’ ouvre and have finally read PoG and Use of Weapons too, as well as four more of his mainstream ones, including his final novel. I have nine more novels to look forward to before I exhaust the great man’s life’s work.
Much as you can see from above that I have always been a reader of so-called genre fiction, as opposed to literary fiction, I have an awareness of such from other sources of reading, such as the 1997–2010 ish era where I read the paper edition of The Guardian daily. You can’t help but absorb culture then. Also odd things like reading histories of SF that mentioned Kurt Vonnegut Jnr and thus reading another great example of a succinct novel, Slaughterhouse V. One of the other books I bought as a kid and still own is Martin Amis’ unusual documenting of his obsession with classic early era arcade video games, Invasion of the Space Invaders, which has a foreword by Steven Spielberg no less. Apart from interviews, I’ve read nothing more by Amis, but could still talk about his work and feel I know his writing a little from that. It’s a fun read and the sort of lovely to own illustrated book which seems to have gone now sadly, perhaps killed by the web.
I’m currently still struggling to properly establish a fiction reading habit. I found the secret for me was an alarm clock and not taking my phone into the bedroom, as I always used to read before lights out before smartphones. I stumbled a little after my initial lockdown efforts, in fact I forgot to mention that I booted up that effort by reading the first Jack Reacher novel: I figured a page turning thriller would get me going and it did. Likewise I did once read the first Iain Rankin Rebus book on loan from a pal. In fact, at a brocante here, 2 years ago, I picked up an omnibus edition of the first few Rebus novels, and a copy of Dune, which I have not re-read since that first time 40 years ago. Firstly though I am starting with something short again: Exit West, a novella mentioned on a podcast I enjoy, Book Shambles. That book was short listed for the Man Booker Prize, so perhaps there is hope for me being well read yet?
