Xmas Purchases

[Colyngbourne]

As if we all didn't have enough to be reading at the moment (*guiltily eyes The Idiot, and Middlesex and the Robertson Davies sequels*), I've enjoyed spending Christmas tokens on the following:
Robinson Crusoe for the Palimpsest January read, Coraline by Neil Gaiman, Lucas by Kevin Brooks, and The Great Good Thing by Roderick Townley (nearly all teenage reads, I know...) and we also were kindly given Mr. Golightly's Holiday by Santa. Enough to be getting on with...

Also, wishing all Palimpsesters Happy 2004 http://www.click-smilies.de/sammlung0903/party/party-smiley-029.gif

[John Self]

Literary-pressie-wise I got Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything (having read it over the past week I can exclusively reveal that it's not nearly short enough), A.S. Byatt's Possession, The Onion Ad Nauseam Vol. 14 and Boris Johnson's collected essays Lend Me Your Ears.

The best thing is that two of these are books designed not to be read sequentially but picked over and thumbed, and so they will not add to my list of books officially unread. Hurray!

[bakunin_the_cat]

Luckily I didn't get any new books or vouchers from santa. It's not that I've suddenly gone off books. God forbid. It's just my unread pile was approaching my (self-imposed) limit of about ten. This may not sound much to you, but given that in an average week I only read one or occasionally two, this is plenty to keep me going.

Also, having 4 otherwise free cat-sitting days between Xmas and New Year gave me a chance to make some inroads into the pile. If I get it down to two or three in the next month or so, I might even allow myself a visit to a certain charity shop near Holborn. Whoopee!

[Jerkass]

In the average week you read "only" one or two?

I think I manage one or two a year these days. Or maybe four or five halves or thirds each year. So, yes, I'll be quite productive and interesting as a contributor here.

[slinks off disconsolately]

[bakunin_the_cat]

Read as much as you want to, or have time for. I tend to alternate between periods of working from home - which mean for some reason I don't get much read at all, periods of working in an office - when I get at least 90 minutes bus and usually 20 minutes bed, and periods of no work at all when I sometimes just spend the whole afternoon with multiple cups of tea and a 'hopefully' good book. With this much time, if anything I should probably read more than I do.

BTW I wasn't being unnecessarily modest. Listening to some of the pal-set here, one or two a day is a perfectly reasonable proposition! My turn to slink off despondently...