What books have you actually read?

My name is written inside, I’ve even added a couple of wincingly pompous notes on occasional pages. I must have read it. But I can’t recall a thing about it.

There’s a lot of useless advice out there about writing, platitudes in wise clothing pretending to offer you inside advice about the route to fame and fortune. So “A writer writes, always” Billy Crystal’s writing class tutor Larry Donner tells his pupils in the film Throw Momma from the Train (at this point, he has writer’s block).

Similarly pithy but I think actually more helpful is “Writers read”. One of the more common suggestions writers hand out when asked for their Top Tips, is that people who want to write a lot should also read a lot. This helps you understand the nuts and bolts of writing, how things are put together, and encourages the idea that it’s a craft you need to study rather than an art form which can only be successfully carried out when inspiration elegantly strikes from time to time.

Reading the book before seeing the film can also prevent nasty surprises. I went to see the 1988 film of Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust at the cinema with a friend. As the credits started to roll, he turned to me in considerable distress and almost shouted: “It can’t end there, it can’t end like that!”

But all this reading is only helpful if the books leave some kind of impression on you.

So, I’ve definitely read Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. There it is on the bookshelf, fenced in by Nobody’s Fool by Richard Russo and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. I remember buying it new when it was all lovely and shiny and unread in the bookshop (from Godfreys in York, sadly no longer with us) and here it is now having been in the wars; shoddily-glued spine broken, loose pages held in place with a rubber band around its middle, a couple of corners turned down, a faint coffee ring on its back cover.

When I pick it up it falls open at certain pages where it must have lived face down on the arm of a chair for a while. My name is written inside it and indeed at some point I’ve even added a couple of wincingly pompous notes on occasional pages – my handwriting proves I was there. I must have read it. I think I remember enjoying it. But I can’t recall a thing about it. Not a thing (except that it’s set in India. Or is it Pakistan? And I think there’s something about a nose too?). Nobody’s name, no incidents, how it starts, how it ends. Nothing. There are plenty of other books, even ones I like, which I’d have difficulty in retelling, but I could still get something out. But when I pick up the Rushdie, it doesn’t even feel physically familiar in my hands.

Have I really read it?

Nobody’s Fool: Suspicious film tie-in

And talking of Nobody’s Fool, there’s another one I’ve definitely read. My wife gave it to me for my birthday. In this case, yes, I can tell you the names of at least three characters, I can give you a vaguely accurate precis of the plot, I know how it finishes. It’s all very familiar. And yet my copy looks absolutely pristine. I’m sure I’ve read it but now I’m a bit suspicious that I just watched (and enjoyed) the film of the book starring Paul Newman as Sully.

What is absolutely certain is that I have read Wuthering Heights. Well, I have technically ‘read’ this. During the summer holidays when I was 11 I was looking around for something and my father suggested Wuthering Heights. So I sat down and read it. Read it? I certainly looked at all the words. I saw the sentences. But I didn’t understand what was going on. I’m not sure it really counts.

Or take The Wind in the Willows, admittedly read ages ago, but very definitely read. However, when my first son was born, somebody gave him a lovely Folio edition of it as a ‘welcome to the world’ present. There I was, sitting in my favourite reading chair, the one with the high back so I can let my head loll comfortably. I wiggled the book out of its slip case and started to flick through, enjoying once again all the fun and adventures when they were… I didn’t remember that bit…nor that bit. As I flicked, there were NEW bits. I checked to see that it hadn’t been ‘updated’ for a new generation. No. But I had certainly read it.

So the next time I was at my parents’ house I started to wade through the cardboard boxes of my children’s books up in the loft. And there it was, mixed up in a pile of the usual suspects, Rosemary Sutcliffs, Roger Lancelyn Greens and some old issues of Tiger and Scorcher. Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Spine slightly damaged, inscribed with full address (including, naturally, The World, The Milky Way, The Universe). And clearly marked ‘Abridged for children’…

So have I read it or not?

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My two 2022 books continue to be available from your local independent bookseller, and of course online (indeed currently half price at Waterstones).