Chris BinchyAuthor
I read maybe 40 or 50 books a year, which is fewer than a lot of people I know. I try to be judicious but occasionally something slips through that I hate. There can be a pleasure in that, though. At the moment, I'm reading C by Tom McCarthy. He's an English writer, whose book, Remainder, got a lot of praise a few years ago. He's seen as a great hope for the avant-garde in English literature and this book got longlisted for the Booker Prize. I'm only 60 pages in but I like it a lot. Precise and beautiful and quite funny. I'm waiting for it to get experimental.
I tend to go from one book to the next. At the start of the year I have a plan but that falls apart before February. I order things off Amazon or ABE in the middle of the night, forget about them and then when they arrive, they feel like presents. I’m easily distracted.
Summer reading? I think people should read what they want, whenever they want, though I suppose I wouldn't read Tess of the d'Urbervilles on a lilo. I managed 50 pages of Denis Johnson's 600-page Tree of Smokeon a two-week holiday this year. That was it. Currently my holidays are not about reading.
What's next? An American friend recommended the novelist and short-story writer, Stewart O'Nan. I read Last Night at the Lobster, a day in the life of the manager of a closing-down restaurant, and loved it so I've ordered a few more of his. I'm not sure what else is coming.
As told to
Tony Clayton- Lea
