And how are you progressing with Margrave of the Marshes, the posthumous autobiography of John Peel? Really? You’re 45 pages in already? Very good. Only 387 to go.
And what about the comedy book of the season, Is it Just Me or is Everything Shit? Is it just me or are there an awful lot of books out there that are never going to be read?
Between 20 and 25 per cent of books bought in Britain each year are purchased in December. In the weeks leading up to Christmas book sales rise to three times that of a mid-year week, according to Nielsen BookScan. The number of books we buy has steadily increased in the past few years to more than 200 million volumes, worth £1.6 billion. But are we actually reading more?
The festive influx of books is a delight. I leaf through them happily on Christmas Day imagining long hours of contented reading ahead. But the downside of this book bounty is that it amplifies the truth about my reading habits. In reality the long hours of contented reading never occur. I consume only a fraction of the books that I buy or that are bought for me.
I’m on page 22 of one of my stocking fillers, Christopher Meyer’s “controversial” DC Confidential. This is a book I genuinely want to read, but I must face facts: the chances of me finishing it are as slim as the former Ambassador to Washington receiving a Christmas card next year from one of Blair’s pygmies.
In total my Christmas haul adds up to 1,975 pages. On a good night I might read ten pages. Often the book doesn’t even get opened, or if it does I have to re-read chunks to remind myself of the stuff I read the night before as my eyelids were fluttering shut. Embarrassing though it is to admit, I probably manage 30 pages a week of pure pleasure reading. At that rate I’ll have finished my new books sometime in April — 2007. Last year’s Christmas books are still stacked on the bookcase by the bed. Kitty Kelley’s The Family has a bookmark inserted in the second chapter. Peter Ackroyd’s The Clerkenwell Tales has a dog-ear on page 63. A 1,000-page work on Irish history is in mint condition.
My shelves groan with partially read books. In the past couple of years the time that was once spent reading is now devoured by children. But this hasn’t changed my reading pattern that much. Before the kids I rarely tackled a novel when not on holiday.
Am I a rare hopeless case? I very much doubt it. Taking into account all the other entertainment options that eat time, perhaps those who are not raising kids or carrying an insane workload and regard themselves as vaguely literate manage a book or two a month. Perhaps I move in especially uncultured circles but a straw poll of friends finds few who are quite this voracious. I expect most of us spend as much time reading about books as we do between their covers.
Some would mock those of us who continue to buy all these books and not really read them. They would suggest that we are vain and pretentious, that we buy books to make us feel clever and better about ourselves. OK, we probably do have some pretensions. But if it is the case that we are trying to make ourselves feel better, then it hasn’t worked for me. I feel horribly guilty about all those unturned pages.
I would defend my habits. Surely it is better to have dipped and skimmed than never to have read at all. I have a tougher time defending my right to own all these volumes. My wife is forever scanning the shelves of my study for contenders for the charity shop. I argue that you never know when you will need a book.
This Christmas I found an answer to my perennial angst about not reading as many books as I would like. Some new books arrived in our house, classics that are beautifully written, a joy to read and can be consumed in one sitting. Why, this morning I worked my way through three of them before breakfast, re-read one and was left enriched by the experience. They belong to my son and they are called Hairy Maclary and Friends, Room on the Broom and the Tale of Jeremy Fisher. I cannot recommend them highly enough.
Great idea, shame about the service
The Christmas books deluge isn’t over. Sometime in the new year various packages will arrive from Amazon. Over Christmas dinner we all swapped moans about the online retail giant. The general consensus was that the books that didn’t arrive on time were slightly less annoying than those that arrived bashed up and had to be sent back. I’m sure most of us would be prepared to spend a few
pence more for our purchases to be bubble-wrapped if it meant that we didn’t have to keep sending stuff back and battling with Amazon (which declines to publicise customer-service phone numbers) to reclaim the cost of postage. Amazon is a fantastic idea that still doesn’t provide this customer with satisfaction.
Human ot traffic warden?
On Christmas Eve I witnessed an episode of utter mean-spiritedness. A guy was arguing with two traffic wardens. He had arrived to visit friends and had parked on a yellow line as he dropped off his family. He was causing no obstruction in our road. He popped inside the house briefly. There were 30 minutes to go before he could park there legally. As he emerged, the vultures who ceaselessly circle the neighbourhood had swooped. His pleas fell on deaf ears. They did not even speak to him as they issued a ticket. They were technically in the right and inflexible and devoid of common sense or charity. “It’s Christmas Eve!” he screamed as they moved on. “This is why I hate cities. You are a disgrace to the human race.” He had it exactly right.
- At the risk of sounding like a Daily Mail headline: what is going on with our crazy weather? As I write, a blizzard (sort of) has hit the capital. On Christmas Day, in my parents’ London garden, two Red Admiral butterflies danced in the sunshine.
