I've gorn and done it - again

I've gone and done it again. I keep saying I have stopped, I keep putting an end to that extravagant habit that seems to have blighted most of my life. I keep making those resolutions to overcome temptation and yet, and yet, like the recidivist I am, I have gone and done it again - I have bought another book. And let me point out at this stage, by book I mean one of those things printed on paper and sandwiched between cardboard covers. One of those things that consumes a forest of trees, which takes a tanker full of scarce fuel to transport around the country and which occupies precious shelf-space in shops that could be better given over to useful products such as ornamental toilet-roll holders or fluffy rabbit shaped cushion covers. One of those old-fashioned book things that can't be acquired in a wi-fi microsecond at a single press of a button. They can't remember how far you have read, they can't look up the meaning of "recidivist" for you, and they can't put themselves to sleep ten minutes after you have re-read that final paragraph a third time. If that's what you want, then you'll need an e-Book: a magical walking, talking, library that can accommodate all the accumulated knowledge of mankind in a thin tablet the size of a cigarette packet. Whenever I fall off the e-Book wagon I quickly finish up with a fatal mix of wrist ache and confusion (try propping one of those real books against a pillow and tapping it to turn the page). I vow to stick to e-Books in future but then temptation creeps up on me - either in the bath or in a "bookshop". In the bath I live in fear of dropping my Kindle in the water in case it somehow electrifies the entire bathtub and me with it. And in the bookshop I am driven wild by those temptresses (why do I think of books as feminine?), stacked seductively on shelves, displaying on their lurid covers all the joys one might find inside if you were to simply pay the going fee.

And just in case you were interested, the book I bought was the highly recommended (by that little gem, the Liskeard Bookshop) 'Tenth of September' by George Saunders. It's a collection of short stories around a theme of 'dark, disturbing and satirical'. It's the next one of my reading list. Currently I'm enjoying 'Toast', the excellently poignant autobiography of the TV chef and food writer Nigel Slater, but that's a topic for a future blog - possibly..... or possibly not.