5 ways to catch up on reading novels
Novels are magical. In a novel, you get lost in another world. No two people read the same story; no two readings are the same. Now, finally, I can get back to reading novels again.
While I’ve been busy doing the research reading needed for my PhD, I’ve pretty much put on hold reading any fiction. I basically stopped reading anything not directly related to my research — no novels, no biographies, no magazines. Nothing. Completely dry.
It’s been tough.
I’ve always loved reading. I read loads as a kid, growing up with Tintin, Asterix, Calvin and Hobbes and the like. Then, later, as a teenaged boy I read mostly science fiction until, eventually, I grew up into a brave little soldier and tried other genres too.
In adult life I’ve read pretty voraciously. I usually have a large backlog of books waiting to be read: several on my bedside table; a small pile on the floor beside the bed; a load on the bookshelves around the house; and a long list in the back of mind of things people have recommended, by authors I’ve previously read or know that I want to read. I read quite widely now, I think, though I’ve never really read many so-called classics — precious little Austen, Dickens, any Brontës, or even 20th Century classics from Hemingway, Woolf, Joyce, etc. I’m a bit embarrassed about that, really.
The plan, then, for this post-PhD life is to get back to reading as many novels as I possibly can. Maybe now’s the time to tackle some classics, too.
Here’s my plan for reading more.
1. Renege on parental responsibilities
Being a dad is such a drag. Screw the kids. Screw 3 square meals a day and clean clothes. Screw support, encouragement, affirmation and moral guidance. Give ’em a bag of crisps and the TV remote and they’ll be entertained for hours, giving me the uninterrupted time I want to get on with all that reading. Job done.
My forthcoming 7–step life coaching guide book on my patented parenting system is with the editors now, as I’m sure you suspected.
b) Keep a list
Write a list. List the books you’ve read. List the books you want to read. Compare the list. Try not to be too disappointed or dejected that the books I’ve read list is much shorter than the list of books I haven’t yet read.
Put the book you’re currently reading in a list of its own. There’s just one in that list, obviously … unless you’re a smarty pants who can keep the plates of several book reading experiences spinning at the same time. Clever clogs.
List the pages you’ve read. List the pages you’ve still got left to read, and then tick them off as you go. Keep your favourite phrases in a list. Give the best ones stars and remember to drop them into conversations so you sound really cultured. List your least favourite phrases. Remember not to talk like that so you don’t sound like an eejit.
Forget that you were keeping a reading list. Then, several months later, remember your list and get morose that it is is so out of date.
Decide to stop making lists. Keeping the list up-to-date is taking up more time than the actual reading. Stupid idea.
iii) Tweet everything
The world needs to know what book you’re reading and why. Well, at least, the 15 people who follow you need to know.
Tweet that you’ve started a new book. Tweet which page you’re on when you finish reading for the day. Tweet when you finish. Tweet what you think of it. Don’t forget the most important part: Tweet your five-star rating of your book.
Pat yourself on the back. You have just made the world a better place.
— Get on with it
Stop trying to be a smart arse with a bloggable system of numbered, instantly forgettable points to a better reading life and just get on with enjoying stuff. Novels are great. Just read them.
Umm …
There is no fifth point.
I’ve actually taken to using GoodReads, an app and website for reading (here’s me on GoodReads). I use it to keep track of all the books that I want to read so I don’t have to remember them:
- novels I want to read soon;
- novels that friends have read and been enthusiastic about that sound really good;
- novels that friends have read and been enthusiastic about that they tell me about and I’m too socially weak to say I’m not interested so very visibly put it down in my GoodReads to-read list;
- novels I pick up in a shop, read the back page, decide not to buy then but maybe buy it later;
- novels I’ve always wanted to read;
- novels I feel like I ought to have read but haven’t;
- novels I ought to have read and I’m not brave enough to confess that I haven’t and must get round to it sometime;
I find that GoodReads is really useful for looking back at books I’ve already read, too, remembering when I read them and what I thought of them at the time.
I also use GoodReads to connect with friends and colleagues, to share stuff we read together, like a virtual book club, and to discover new stuff to read that I’d never normally consider. It’s fab like that.
My top 5 books, ever. Currently.
The Name of the Rose
by Umberto Eco
The historical whodunnit that started them all. Brother William investigates a series of bizarre deaths in a 14th Century Italian monastery. Wonderfully plotted with evocative, visceral descriptions of monastic life in the Middle Ages.
A Suitable Boy
by Vikram Seth
An epic love story, as Mrs Rupa Mehra and her daughter try to find ‘a suitable boy’ for Lata to marry. A rich and deep account of life in four families in 1950s India, in the years after Indian Independence. A huge novel — over 1,500 pages in my edition — but it never lagged. It’s been quite a while since I read it. Maybe I should again?
An Instance of the Fingerpost
by Iain Pears
Set in Restoration-era England, in Oxford at the beginning of Enlightenment science, this is another murder mystery. A fellow of New College, Oxford, is found dead in suspicious circumstances, a young woman is accused of his murder. The novel gives four accounts of the same murder, each casting doubt on the previous narrators’ versions. I’ve returned to this story many times, re-reading the novel and never tiring of it, and this perspectival narrativity is a the heart of my PhD studies.
The Third Policeman
by Flann O'Brien
A new entry in my top-5 books chart, I’ve just read this book for the first time this summer. Can’t believe I’ve not read it before. It’s a surreal and brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. And bicycles. The atomic theory of bicycles. Its ending is superb, one of the best I’ve ever read.
My Name is Red
by Orhan Pamuk
Orhan Pamuk is, I think, my favourite author. This is, I think, my favourite of his books. Turkish winner of the Nobel Prize for literature (in 2006), his books often explore the conflict between Western and Eastern worlds and the impact on and often loss of identity. My Name is Red is one of the few Pamuk novels set in the far past (most are placed in 20th Century Turkey), in the Ottoman Empire in the 16th Century, but it uses a profoundly postmodern style to challenge the view and perception of the narrator and the reader. These are, again, ideas that I worked with in my PhD study. Part love story, part murder mystery. All brilliant.
Putting these 5 books down here, I’ve realised that 4 of the 5 are historical novels, 3 set centuries ago. Curious.
20 books in a year?
In this post-PhD world, I’ve decided to set myself the challenge of reading 20 books in 2017. It’s a pretty arbitrary number I know, and I had no idea at the time whether 20 was a reasonable number or not. At the moment, I’m pretty well on track I think.
Here’s a quick summary of what I’ve read so far in 2017, and what I’ve made of them.
The Sellout
by Paul Beatty
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Superb satire of race and identity in the absurdity of modern ‘post-racial’ America. I really enjoyed it, though I guess it may be an acquired taste for some.
The Man in the High Castle
by Philip K Dick
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Finally got round to reading this famous novel with a simple premise — what if the Axis Powers, not the Allies, won the Second World War? It’s obviously been dramatised in a TV series recently, starring the rather fabulous Rufus Sewell, and its obvious why the TV show has taken a different narrative path from the book. Nonetheless, the book is really good. Like much science fiction, in imagining a different world it’s able to examine more freely the mess of our own.
The Circle
by Dave Eggers
⭐
Dull, dull, dull. 145 pages in and all that’s happened is the protagonist has got a new job and has settled in. Dull. Didn’t finish.
Now a major Hollywood film, which I’m never going to watch.
The Finkler Question
by Howard Jacobson
️⭐⭐⭐
I bought a copy of this second-hand years ago, and it just sat on my bookshelf in that enormous backlog. I picked it up because it’d been short-listed for some prize or other — the Booker, was it? Did it even win it? — and I’d enjoyed Jacobson’s newspaper essays. I valued his view of the world.
After waiting this long to read it, I’m glad I had … both not rushed, and read it. It was fine. Not brilliant, not terrible. Fine. The Finkler Question is a warm and gently witty an examination of Jewish identity in modern Britain. It’s fine. Suggests that other Jacobson might be worth reading (see below).
French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France
by Tim Moore
⭐⭐⭐
Travel writings of a relative non-cyclist decides to cycle the route of the 2000 Tour de France. Funny in (many) places. Trying to hard in others. Feels a bit old now, but worth the read.
The Ministry of Nostalgia
by Owen Hatherley
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Non-fiction. A polemic on how the past is being re-packaged and re-branded, through vacuous, shrink-wrapped phrases like ‘keep calm and carry on,’ to defend the indefensible. Hatherly convincingly contests that the early- and especially mid-20th Century post-War eras are being made fashionable and chic — cf. the highly valued ex-council housing that is now in the private market through the Right-To-Buy scheme, and debonair faux-history aesthetic events and festivals like the Eroica Brittania cycling festival — in order to manage a sleight-of-hand. Whereas the post-War years were largely redisitributive, our modern austerity era is seeing a radical and clandestine shift of wealth in the other direction.
Pussy
by Howard Jacobson
⭐⭐⭐⭐
I’ve found the Trump era really hard to cope with. The day of the US election result I could barely contain my grief and just had to flee the news and go to a wild place, to the Malvern hills where I could touch the sky. Jacobson’s Pussy is his own reaction to the new world of Trump. A fantastical, comic satire. Good fun.
On Chesil Beach
by Ian McEwan
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Only my second McEwan novel — I really enjoyed Amsterdam, so looked forward to reading this one. On Chesil Beach has a bit of an aura, or at least I’d heard it was pretty special. It didn’t disappoint.
An intimate, poignant story of a young couple and their wedding night. Brilliantly written.
The Samurai’s Garden
by Gail Tsukiyama
⭐⭐⭐⭐
On the cusp of the Second World War, a young Chinese man, Stephen, is sent to a small Japanese village to recover from a bout of tuberculosis, where he’s cared for by Matsu, the family housekeeper and a master gardener, and meets Matsu’s friend Sachi, a woman suffering with leprosy. A lovely novel that examines loyalty, honour and the nature of masculinity.
The Third Policeman
by Flann O’Brien
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Fantastically surreal novel. See my summary above.
Invisible Monsters
by Chuck Palahniuk
⭐⭐⭐⭐
From Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, Invisible Monsters is another one of those books I bought ages ago and have had on the shelf, unread, for ages. Read it this summer on holiday and really enjoyed it. Edgy doesn’t cover it. Disturbing too. And uses that to be take a pop at our assumptions and presumptions about who we are. Great stuff.
The Architect’s Apprentice
by Elif Shafak
⭐⭐⭐⭐
A delightful novel set in the 16th Century Ottoman royal court, following the life of Jahan, the Sultan’s elephant handler as he becomes to the enigmatic, paternal royal master architect. I really enjoy reading novels from or influenced by narrative traditions outside of the Western idiom, and liked the episodic style of this book, with changes of fortune aplenty.
Etape: The untold stories of the Tour de France’s defining stages
by Richard Moore
⭐⭐⭐⭐
A virtual tour of the Tour de France through 20 chapters that each focus on a different significant rider in the Tour’s history. Whilst the riders are mostly major stars — Tour winners and its leading lights, in the main — many of the stories are of the overlooked, the ignored or the forgotten events, like what happens on a rest day, or when heavy sprinters struggle to make it up the mountains within the time-cut, or suffering through illness with the singular vision of getting to the finish in Paris. Superb writing and a focus on the human and heroic dimensions from a great cycling journalist make this book accessible and highly readable for professional cycling fans and non-cyclists alike.
Top of the backlog for the rest of the year:
Currently reading:
- Winter in Madrid, by C.J. Sansom
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari (audiobook)
- Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas Piketty (slowly)
Upcoming, maybe:
- The New Life, by Orhan Pamuk
- The Essex Serpent, by Sarah Perry
- In Xanadu, by William Dalrymple
Well, we’ll see what actually happens.
