I've been really struggling lately.
Have always been an avid reader - EXTREMELY rare that I don't have a book on the go - I'd say that usually I do about 10 hours of reading a week.
Recently, though, I've been struggling to find books that will hold my interest. I'll pick up a book, read 2 or 3 chapters and will totally lose focus and interest.
I used to be really into sci-fi and fantasy books, but I've spent years reading that stuff, so I'm trying to branch out a little bit. I've found that I really love a book where there's no huge dramatic plotline, but something more like "if nobody speaks of remarkable things" by Jon McGregor or Eleven by Mark Watson.
Does anyone have any suggestions for books, or just general suggestions to boost the ole' enthusiasm?
Kind of hard to make suggestions for books when I don't know what you like Mike. But if you don't know what you like either, then let's have a little tour round the five bookshelves in my bedroom:
Can dismiss bookshelf 1 quickly, it is full of law stuff. But for general reading I can recommend
The Juryman's Tale by Trevor Grove and A.P.Herberts
Uncommon Law - it might be a spoof but it is a bloody accurate spoof.
Bookshelf 2 has a whole load of science and arts and miscellaneous stuff in it. No idea what you are into, but assuming you are (a) smart and (b) interested there's Dawkins'
Extended Phenotype, Richard Fortey's
Dry Store Room No. 1 (which really is a must-read), Steven Pinker's
The Blank Slate (probably the best of his books), David Deutsch's
Fabric of Reality (bloody heavy going but worth it), Harry Tomlinson's book on Bonsai (Dan Barton is more fun in real life, but Tomlinson is way more practical), Robert W Gill's books on perspective (which are technically not needed now being as we have computers, but nevertheless give a fascinating insight into how to handle perspective properly - volume 2 is specially good), Don Norman on the
Design of Everyday Things, Peter Thompson's
Creative Propogation (by a long way the best book on propogation of plants), David Deutsch on the
Evolution of Language. Then there's a bunch of accountancy stuff and a load of art, painting, craft, undersea exploration, geology and modelmaking that you may not be interested in.
Bookshelf 3 has reference books at the bottom. One Encyclopaedia Britannica and a bunch of Bibles, Dictionaries, Thesauruses, Atlases etc. Next shelf up is cookery. Then music, then we get onto miscellaneous stuff I haven't worked out what to do with yet but which does include W N Weech's
History of the World (early 1940s but a damn good overview), Carcopino's
Daily Life in Ancient Rome (wonderful), Primo Levi's
If this is a Man (essential reading full stop), Steadman's
Vermeer's Camera, Helene Hanff's
84 Charing Cross Road (yeah it's a tear-jerker, but it is real tears for real people), Ann Rule's
The Stranger Beside Me (chilling), and a whole bunch of stuff on magic tricks and illusions where for some reason I have filed Ernst Gombrich's
Art & Illusion and
The Story of Art. Both worth reading.
Bookshelf 4 is fiction. Basically I have thrown away all my fiction except the stuff I enjoy rereading. It would have had a full set of Agatha Christies in it except I gave them all to my daughter, but now it has a mixed bunch of Lee Child, Dick Francis (all but one of them, and that's because I dropped it in the bath), and a handful of the David Baldacci. There's a limited number of these things the bear rereading.
Bookshelf 5 is what's on the go now, it is next to my bed. Top shelf is what I have to read next (thankfully it is pretty empty now), bottom shelf is stuff I really don't want to read but haven't got around to chucking out yet (like 7 habits of whatever corporate crap it is).
All the other stuff is downstairs. I'm nearly at the end of volume 1 of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but there's 6 volumes more to go and I don't have space upstairs yet.
