The first of my factual books for the summer is What to Read Next by Stig Abell. The author is a literary critic and writer, and he has also written some crime novels. I don’t know when I acquired this book but a sticker on the front shows me that I bought it for the ridiculous price of fifty pence from a charity shop somewhere. The book is in excellent condition and obviously hasn’t been read a lot.
The author has a daily commute by train. He decides to spend a year reading a different type of book each month – this is the sort of thing that I do in order to reduce my to-be-read piles, so that made me engage with the author immediately. The types of books that he reads include crime, classics, Shakespeare, historical novels, plays, poetry, translated novels and literary fiction. The author reads some of these as audio books and some in paper. He makes it clear that he enjoys genre fiction but most of what he reads is more literary.
For each month the author reads three or four books and he writes about how he feels about them. I have probably read about half of the books that he chooses so it is interesting to see whether I agree, or not, with his opinion. Mostly, I agree. I was also interested to hear his views on the books that I haven’t read. Also included in the narrative each month are his views on aspects of reading, such as audio books, how to maximise your reading time, whether you have to finish a book you start, and interesting words he finds in his reading. Each chapter then has a list of other books, similar to those he has read, which he recommends.
This was an excellent start to my factual summer because I always enjoy reading about books and what people think of them – I like seeing comments on my blogs, comments on social media and blogs by other writers. I am not sure that this book has encouraged me to read anything new, but, of course, I am trying to get rid of books and not acquire more ! I do think, however, that any avid reader would enjoy this book.
I am not going to keep this first factual book and shall peel off the unsightly label on the front cover and pass it to Oxfam for resale.
Anne Is Reading 