Reading the World

Read: Milkman by Anna Burns (Northern Ireland), Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang (United States of America) During this period of Coronavirus lockdown, the sound of the doorbell is unnerving. Admittedly, 80% of the time, it is because someone (ususally me) has plugged the doorbell plug back into the wall after charging a phone/tablet/laptop, but those other 20% of times create an odd confusing feeling within me. Something from the past has come back into my life, a remnant of pre-lockdown life when the doorbell provided potential social interaction or more likely, social interaction for my children who were being invited out to play football for the seventh time that day. A few days ago, I emerged from my house in this fog of confusion to find my friend Kenny and his children in a lorry, their belongings stacked in the back ready to be transported to Belfast. Kenny’s wife Nicola was following in a car and they were heading home after twelve years in Brighton. We said goodbye, st...

Read: If This is a Man by Primo Levi (Italy),  Germinal  by Emile Zola (France),  Madame by Antoni Libera (Poland) Books find their way into my consciousness, hand and eye-line in all sorts of different ways and the journey of those books from the writer’s pen to their being absorbed by me is both interesting and mysterious. I think that the most common reason I read a book is because of a recommendation, but often one recommendation is like a tree trunk with branches, leaves and fruit spiralling from the trunk in all directions, whether it be other books by the same author, references to other books within the book I’m reading or other books with the same theme. This process of reading books from every nation in the world is one that is all about recommendation, largely from people that have never recommended me a book before, but this month I went back to my friend, Ed, who has recommended a handful of books to me in the past.  It was the weekend before ...