About Me

Wednesday 24 March 2010

Reading not writing


A Wedding blessing, a funeral (both concerning good and lovely people) and work, work, work. No writing.



Maybe it was having to read the bloody 'Killing Floor' for the book group with its with short. Fragmented. Sentence. Structures and its macho story line that rendered me incapable of writing or even of breathing. Not quite my cup of tea, you might say. Apart from the bit when our macho hero reads the newspaper when incarcerated. What else would you do? I'd even read 'The Killing Floor' again if I every found myself in the nick with nothing else on offer. (When I was a child I used to read the bleach bottles when sitting on the toilet.) Oh and the Afro-American barber shop guys, they were quite good. On the plus side - there always has to be a plus side, especially since my employer had spent plenty of pounds sending me on a corporate positive thinking course - reading the book sent me back to the song that inspired the title: major sweaty, funky blues.

After wading through 300 odd pages of that stuff, I grasped Amanda Craig's 'Hearts and Minds' to my bosom, and fitted it neatly into my routine, so much did it reminded me of how good good fiction can be.