4 by 4 (Books, obviously)
To read now and later. With bonus ponderings on procrastination, output, and the August mindset
Despite not having been on holiday (prime beach and reading time), I have spent some very English time on very English beaches: pebbles, bracing swims followed by flasks of coffee and apple turnovers. And I have also been powering through books.
It is perfectly possible that the reading is a direct result of not having been away and instead doing the universally-recognised-amongst-parents school holiday juggle, in which you attempt to do several things at once and end up doing them all but to a sub-par level. Or at least, I do. Such is life as - I think - Mma Ramotswe of Alexander McCall Smith’s Ladies’ Detective Agency would say. See also: procrastination. Because I might not be able to achieve peak parenting/write 3000 words in a day/hone and pitch five perfect, commissionable feature ideas, but I can definitely read another book.
Out of idle curiosity - and stay with me, this all ties up neatly in the end, I promise - I have just looked up how the No 1 Most Prolific Author accounts for his prodigious output. Alexander McCall Smith says his secret is getting up early - 4am early - and writing before everyone else is up, and travelling extensively, so he can work on planes, trains and in doubtless very nice hotel rooms. I also suspect the man has a laser focus. Whereas my brain has slipped into August mode: somnambulant, slow, prone to procrastination. I have just re-read this post by
with a handy anti-procrastination toolkit.But as a result of all the displacement activity reading, l can offer you several titles to add to your August reading list, and four to earmark for September. Obviously, there are more than four (we neeed to talk about Miranda July’s All Fours and the new Charlotte Mendelson, Wife, just for starters - but the 4x4 title appealed to me. We will come to the rest in due course.
The absolute delight: Death at the Sign of the Rook - Kate Atkinson
I would read Kate Atkinson’s shopping list - for she is SUCH a brilliant writer. But this is even better: a delicious, inventive, sardonic homage to the golden age of detective novels and the sixth to feature Atkinson’s rather grumpy (but secretly avuncular) veteran sleuth Jackson Brodie. HANG OUT THE BUNTING.