The useful art of skipping:
Somerset Maugham was all for skipping parts of books because "a sensible person does not read a novel as a task. He reads it as a diversion". Robert McCrum has been pondering this and feels attitudes - and writing - have changed since Maugham's day. Click on that link to read more (without missing bits, of course) and see the contemporary novels in which he feels skipping is justified - of the three, I've read only the Byatt and I didn't skip at all, but then I'd have to be hard-pressed not to read every word of a book. How about you? And do you see novels as task or diversions?
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Books to the fore:
One of my best books of last year (the full list is here) was Half of the Human Race
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Library augmentation:
If, like me, you could always do with another book, and you haven't already entered the draw to win one, please do have a go.
