gayo linge

It's a commonplace that in reading novels one can escape the ravages of time. In 1994, I borrowed my student housemate's innocent-looking hardback edition of Nicholson Baker's The Fermata in which Arno Strine writes about how he can actually stop time. The title refers to the sign in music scores, as seen on the cover, indicating "a pause of unspecified length on a note or rest".What he does with

Looking over the list of books read over a decade, it becomes clear that each book came too early or too late, or not at all; unless, of course, not yet. Untimely medications. Of the first, Robert Pinget's Be Brave applies. Again, lightness rather than heaviness, when there was hope, the illusion thereof. All too early.Pinget was a friend of Beckett's who, in their correspondence, told him "

Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of philosophy in the series. Many will say it is not a book of philosophy at all. That would explain why I gorged on Nick Land's The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism because it was the polar opposite to the guidebook on the syllabus, which we had to buy for an excruciating

I've written about Gert Hofmann's novels a few times, most recently Veilchenfeld (Our Philosopher in the US edition), but not his short stories. In the year Hofmann died aged only 62, I bought and read Balzac's Horse and other stories in the wonderful Minerva paperback imprint. They confused and disappointed me. Later, I lost the book along with many others. On a whim last year I searched for a

Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my attention, poetry should do too. Under this assumption I bought and read Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems in this chunky Faber edition, adding an ugly plastic cover.*Many of Stevens' lines still go around my head like song lyrics – slogans from an inert revolution – and there are many I reread in

One the first books I found in a bookshop* upon moving to Brighton was Rosalind Belben's novel Is Beauty Good. I had seen it two years earlier chosen in a newspaper books of the year listing alongside Jacques Roubaud's Le Grand Incendie de Londres and Thomas Bernhard's Old Masters. Those were the days. I'd not read a book like Is Beauty Good before, and haven't since, and while its unique

The first book I read in the 39 years of this series was a genre thriller, and I've read only two more since. The second one came along this year. In 1989, I got a temporary job in the archives of the Royal Navy Submarine Museum where I met Carl Erlewyn-Lajeunesse, an anti-authoritarian Canadian Saul Bellow-lookalike with a conspiritorial laugh. Our job was to enter into a computer database the

Nowadays I would be put off reading a book labelled controversial and exciting gossipy attention on TV and in newspapers, but in 1989 I read Alexander Stuart's The War Zone that did exactly that. It was later made into a controversial film.The only thing I remember of the novel is the comparison to Martin Amis made by the reviews, which may have been why I picked it up, and I mention it here only

This is one of my most surprising discoveries in second-hand bookshop trawls in the far off days when they existed, especially because it was found in Portsmouth, not the most literary of cities despite Dickens and Conan-Doyle (or perhaps because of Dickens and Conan-Doyle). The original title translated by the great Ralph Manheim is Seul comme Franz Kafka and comes from Janouch's conversations:"

From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the third, including a lot more non-fiction. This was due to cycling to libraries in adjacent towns where the selection was wider. One of them had my first non-novel choice: this edition of Chomsky's Turning the Tide. Chomsky's name came to my attention when, in an interview with the NME, Robert Wyatt

In my second year of reading, I read four novels by DM Thomas, beginning with his most famous, The White Hotel, in the edition below with its very 1980s cover design. I look at the single-word titles of the others and can remember absolutely nothing about them. Both the title and the three forgotten novels continue the theme of 1985, with the title following Martin Amis' guideline, adding a

The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite novelist (which tells you all you need to know about the intellectual energies of British Royal Family). It was the hardback edition below and tells the story of an Olympic champion marksman who comes into the possession of a betting system that guarantees profit. Dick Francis was a prolific author of

In 1985, I read two books. The following year I read a lot more, and it was then I began to keep a list of each book I finished. I've kept the list ever since. In this blog series I will choose one book from each of the 39 years and write whatever occurs to me and post whatever I've written each morning for 39 days.However, I will constrain the choice to an author or book I have not written about