Holiday reading

Picking holiday reading is far too important to leave until the last few months before departure. It is essential NOT TO LISTEN to anyone advocating trash. Light? Yes, certainly. Advisedly, even. But trash? You can read trash any time of the year. Trash is for when your brains are in the employ of grubby bosses or otherwise obliquely being used in order to secure a living. Trash is for when you're fagged from work, or your reading time's restricted to the odd ten minutes just before the lights go out and you're losing or have already consciousness and concentration.

In the not too distant future, I'll return to a fortnight's holiday amd pack a real BELTER in the old gunny sack. Something like Tolstoy's Warren Peas, or something by Proust (unsummarised).

The main reading holiday  - obviously I have more than holiday a year - usually involves going through a number of volumes selected by myself and my good lady. This year, we're packing:

• PG Wodehouse - Laughing Gas. We always take PG Wodehouse;
• David Karp - One, an interesting looking speculative charity shop purchase;
• Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues (as above);
• Timothy J Jarvis - The Wanderer, by a lecturer at the Uni where I ply my trade;
• Helen MacDonald - H is for Hawk, which has one of those multibuy money off stickers on the cover, which is always a bit fishy.

Will report back.