I was moaning the other day about my lack of faithfulness to particular books at the moment, and I'm afraid my skittishness shows little sign of abating. However, I did manage to finish Richard Dawkins's The Greatest Show on Earth today and feel somewhat richer in my understanding of the nature of life for doing so. I thought I might put aside the Collected Works of Flannery O'Connor for a while, having completed the short stories in her first published collection, but then found myself hooked on her second novel, The Violent Bear It Away, so it looks as if this will constitute my main reading in the way of fiction for a week or so, assuming I can keep my nose out of those modern fairy tales I bought the other day, which I can't.
The two sort of problematic tomes which have mysteriously infiltrated my official reading have been Jean Aitchison's The Articulate Mammal, picked up from the library, and Equals by Adam Phillips, which was left lying around on a table in the staffroom where colleagues dump items they don't want for recycling. I've been reading both sort of without meaning to. And these have been supplemented by the last two issues of The New York Review of Books which can be picked up a lot cheaper at Holland Village than other places.
So my promise is to complete all the above before straying again. And part of me, a very knowing bit, is already saying, Fat chance.
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