A fully-packed book case
THE QUESTION OF HOW MANY books to take on holiday is a vexed one. My formula (number of days x 2) has the beauty of simplicity, and has disappointment so neatly built into it that I need never face the truth of why I only got through half of one of them. I can tell myself it’s not because I was too lazy, or busy tiring out my children, or too repeatedly semi-drunk to concentrate: it’s because I brought too many in the first place. Just as a man with two clocks never knows what time it is, a man with a toteful of novels will never find a story he absolutely must stick with.
Perhaps I should be less ambitious, both in scale and reach. I’ve never felt that a holiday is a time for fluff and nonsense: airport thrillers with type so large it’s like being shouted at; the walking wounded. This has led to unhappy one night stands with many of the twentieth century’s finest, and Saul Bellow. (, my old nemesis — we meet again!)
