I’d wish you all a happy Halloween but it just passed me by…again! Earlier I was out in Kingston seeing a film (it was Johnny English Reborn in case you are asking) and a few of the natives were taking the ghost and ghoul theme very seriously indeed – the bars and pubs were full of those goth dressed ‘All Hallows Day’ revellers – the celebrations have certainly moved on from the days of trick and treating!
None of the above even remotely relates to what’s been happening to me for the last few months though – I’ve re-started something that I used to do a lot of in childhood. It can’t really be described as regression – it’s more a case of going ‘back to basics’ – I’m reading books again. It may not seem like much of a revelation, but up to about three months ago the only thing I could be bothered to read in the printed form was the newspaper sports sections when I had the odd five or ten minutes to spare.
tome-riffic!
This was not always the case. As a child I was a real book worm – I used to love reading. Although I never could claim to have been much into the acclaimed literary stuff, I did read an awful lot of books. It all began with the ‘Cat in the Hat’ by Dr Seuss, and from then on the number of books I read increased exponentially. As a child I used to latch onto to certain authors and characters. I remember a series of books about the schoolboy adventures of ‘Jennings’, who was pretty much in the mould of Richmal Cromptons ‘William’. Other childhood favourites were ‘Danny Dunn’ who was from the States, and there was the detective series ‘Agaton Sax’ created by the Scandinavian author Nils Olof Franzén. The works of Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl got a look in, and I read tomes by countless other writers such as Jules Verne, John Mortimer, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie – just too many to list really. I just worked my way through the fiction section of the local New Malden library.
As I got older the stuff I read got a bit more specialised. I was an avid reader of science fiction – Harry Harrison’s ‘Stainless Steel Rat’ series was a firm favourite, and yes, I was one of those guys who bought a lot of ‘Dr Who’ books. In my teens I got really into horror – to this day I have read loads of Stephen King, Richard Laymon, Shaun Hutson to name but a few. I also have a pretty extensive collection of Sven Hassel books, which are war stories of the flying guts variety, but I suppose there is no accounting for taste! This reading habit petered out in adulthood as I ended up doing other things. Work along with the development of the hectic squash playing, Kingston and Weybridge radio broadcasting type of lifestyle meant that I had precious little time to settle down with a book.
This was basically the state of play up to this August. Due to some structural changes at work I was between projects – I suddenly found myself with time on my hands. To fill the void I started reading the Millennium trilogy by Swedish author Stig Larsson that I had bought ages ago from a well known bookstore in Kingston. These provided the inspiration for the ‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ series of films, and even though I have seen all the movies, the books proved to be a riveting read.
Even though I am back working full time I still try and find time to read. These days my book time is usually confined to my lunch hour. Once more, reading is back up there as part of my life.
