Tuesday 18 December 2018

Christmas reading


It's that time of year again: that regular annual ritual of weeding out my book stack to fit into my holiday book sack.


What books are you struggling to fit into your book sack this summer?

Or do you just take a bigger sack?
.

7 comments:

Mark Hubbard said...

I'm working!

Martin English said...

If it wasn't for ebooks, I wouldn't be able to carry them all (regardless of the size of sack). Now I just need the time ...

Dinwar said...

I've been on a Patrick O'Brian kick recently.

I also second Martin English's vote for ebooks. They really make pleasure reading easier. I keep a tablet by my chair in the living room, so I can read while my wife watches TV. Then I can take my library with me while I travel for work, and read in the hotel room. It's not so good for research--I've yet to find a way to take notes/make marginal comments in an ebook that's worth a damn, and cross-referencing books is impossible--but for personal enjoyment it really does make life easier.

Unknown said...

"The Executioners Song" - Norman Mailer
"The Progressive Era" - Murray Rothbard
"Explaining Post-Modernism" - Stephen Hicks

Craig said...

I've seen these piles of books that you claim as your holiday reading a number of times now and the same thoughts spring to my mind every year:
* You read a lot of books on the same subjects.
* You must have amazingly long holidays.
* You must be a speed reader.
* You don't read all those books.
There are roughly 34 books in the picture.
Given the average 2 week holiday, that's about 2 books a day.
Given a month, it's a book a day. That's amazing stamina.

Peter Cresswell said...

"... the same thoughts spring to my mind every year..."

As they do in mine, i.e., what space I give to books leaves less over for beer. A fearful conundrum!

"You read a lot of books on the same subjects."

Do I?

"You must have amazingly long holidays."

I wish.

"You must be a speed reader."

It's a curse.

"You don't read all those books."

Not if I can't fit them all in my book sack I can't.

So what have you been reading, Craig, o'er these overcast bucolic days?

Craig said...

Well played! My pitiful holiday / Christmas reading consisted of the following:

The Folio Anthology of Essays : Selected by Frank Delaney
The James Bond Dossier : Kingsley Amis
Jude the Obscure : Thomas Hardy
The Golden Bough : James George Frazer (finished this at the start of December).
Journey by Moonlight : Antal Szerb

...and since my holidays have one week to go...

Albion: Origins of the English Imagination : Peter Ackroyd